EARLY INMAN'S

OF THE

SOUTH

Randy McConnell

Jefferson City, MO

Call 314-635-1557 for permission

1994

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Early Inmans of the South

1994, Randy McConnell

The English Inmans drew their name from their jobs: they were medieval innkeepers, who offered lodging as well as food and drink for travelers. The Inmans were centered on the ancestral home in Pately Bridge, Yorkshire, England members of the landed gentry who were descended from King John of Gaunt.(1) The law of primogeniture forced younger sons to pursue mercantile and other occupations, and this inability to inherit family land combined with persecution of the Quakers (or Puritans) to presage their emigration to America. The direct lineage of the Southern colonial Inmans remains murky as it extends west.

References to the surname in this area date from 1619 when John Inman arrived near Jamestown, VA on the ship Mintrene's Muster; though he was forced into indentured servitude by a wealthy planter in 1628, no branch of the family has claimed descent from this man.

The early Inmans of record were apparent Quakers, a religious minority who began to arrive in the middle Atlantic colonies of Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia in the 1650s to escape persecution in England and just as importantly to profit from the American wilderness and new trading opportunities. As dissidents, they tended to avoid contact with royal authorities, including the establishment churches that served as the official registries for births, baptism, marriages and deaths in VA and MD. None of the excellent, detailed Quaker records have yet yielded much information on early lines of this family.

Researchers who have studied the Inmans' family history in those two colonies generally have focused on two Robert Inmans as pro-genitors of the family in America, and they often have combined the two men into one character. But the line of Quaker Robert Inman who married Mary Bailey, came to Surry Co., VA by 1685 and died 1701/2 has been traced through eastern North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia without apparent family contact with the other important line(s) of Inmans. This family falls into the early categories of Puritans who became Quakers.

A 1906 letter, written by an Anderson Co., TN descendant,(2) said a second family line in America sprang from Robert Inman who settled on a farm now within the city of Baltimore, MD and gave his name to a creek named Inman's Run. The writer only listed her ancestor, son Ezekiel Inman, in describing Robert's family and heirs, and said he was born in MD. If so, this Robert must have arrived, at the latest, by c. 1720 and probably well before.

Maryland records, thus far, only have yielded the 1704 estate account of Benjamin Inman (a family name) of St. Mary's Co., the colonial capital well south of Baltimore, and the 1743 marriage of Ann Inman to a Haile. No Inmans are shown on the transport records for land claims, although in the 1670s several entries of Inion/Inon (two Johns and a Mary) may have indicated Inmans. Circa 1676, a Henry Inman is said to have fled from VA to MD after Bacon's Rebellion, but no solid evidence has been found.

In western VA on the then-virgin frontier the Inmans (3) journeyed down the Great Shenandoah Valley along much the same route taken by the hordes of Ulster Scots, or Scotch-Irish, who spread from PA to SC after 1720. The Quakers, Palatinate Germans and the Ulster Scots took a similar path, debarking around New Castle, Delaware (then PA) and gradually building and following the Great Wagon Road south; the English authorities and settlers on the seaboard encouraged these pioneers to provide a defense and buffer against the French and their Indian allies.

The Inman family surfaces with Benjamin, who witnessed a will (4) in April 1752 in Frederick Co. (northwest), VA, and received a Northern Neck VA land grant before 1762 that he assigned to others. Two younger Inmans, William and John, appeared in 1762 as chain carriers on survey crews for these grants, including the one held by Benjamin.

After 1752, the Inman references grow rapidly in the then-adjacent western VA counties of Frederick, Augusta, Albemarle and Bedford in relation to land dealings, road duties and military service, but because the Quaker tradition may have still held, the record lacks any references to wills or marriages that would confirm family relationships until after the Revolutionary War.

During this era, unlike vengeful earlier days, the VA authorities, eager to encourage western settlement, didn't persecute these backwoods Quakers or force them to register with the church; many were granted dispensations from tithing or taxes for the support of the parish establishment.

Historians, in their musings over the scattered data, have focused on several possible Inman brothers who were born by c. 1730 and came to western Virginia.

- Benjamin, mentioned above, who may have joined other Inmans in Burke Co., NC at least briefly. A branch of Inmans, headed by a devout Quaker.

- Benjamin Sr. (1698-July 4, 1774), sprouted in western SC and spread across the South after the War of 1812. John and Benjamin (Jr.) Inman had land claims on the Bush and Saluda rivers in SC by 1768.

- Ezekiel who first appears in confirmed data as an officer in British regular forces between 1754 and 1763 in the French and Indian War, apparently drawn from Albemarle Co., VA. A notation indicates that he owned taxable property in Augusta Co. in 1755, but he was not found when taxes were collected.(5) Ezekiel married Hannah or Henrietta Hardin, probably in Frederick Co., VA c. 1740 and remarried to Fanny Wakefield of Albemarle Co. before they moved to Burke Co., NC. He was still living there in 1793, over age 60. Widow Fanny later moved to Blount Co., TN. Because of his three Biblically named sons (Shadrach, Meshack and Abednego), their alleged exploration with Daniel Boone in 1767, and a enormous brood of descendants, Ezekiel's line has been heavily documented compared to the others.

- Hezekiah, who is mentioned in the estate records of Michael Riley from 1754 to 1757 in Augusta Co., VA. Hezekiah later moved to Albemarle Co. and probably died in Burke Co., NC. He married a Hiatt/Hyatt and had four sons.

- Lazarus, who surfaces in Augusta Co. court records in 1760. Also of interest are the chain carriers: William, who some believe was born by 1723, but more probably in the 1740; and John who in 1770 was apprehended by colonial forces for killing the Indian Stephen in western VA. Lord Botetourt, the royal governor, sent a letter to the king's court with the body of John who is said to have committed a vile offense that, in family stories, concerned his love affair with an Indian maiden.(6) William and apparent brother Elisha lived on adjacent Bedford Co, VA farms, and both had intermarried with the Morgan family.

- Finally, some family storytellers also list Joshua and Edmund Inman as sons of Robert Inman who stayed behind in MD, but no proof has been offered.

Lazarus Inman (c. 1730-1781)

Circumstances and the Biblical naming pattern tie Lazarus to Ezekiel and Hezekiah as brothers. Hezekiah was known to live in Augusta Co., at least in the mid-1750s, and his dealings brought him in contact with men who later were close neighbors or associates of Lazarus. Ezekiel, too, lived in Augusta during this time, but, more importantly, he named his youngest son Lazarus (d. young).

The sparse references to Lazarus begin on Feb. 19, 1760 when he witnessed a deed from neighborhood farmer John Hutcheson to Francis Alexander, which for five pounds transferred ownership of 265 acres on Long Meadow near the South River.(7) George Hutcheson had received the original grant in 1738 for the land, which lay on or near the site of modern Waynesboro, VA. Joining Lazarus as witnesses were two other Alexanders, James and John.

The picture builds for Lazarus during the 1760s of a quiet tenant farmer in the South River valley, which was dominated by Long Meadow.

The other early citations in Augusta Co. court records are:

Nov. 20, 1761 - James Hollis, George Wooldridge and Lazarus Inman were appointed jurymen.(8) His service on the jury likely indicated that Lazarus was a property owner.

March 15, 1768 - Lazarus Inman was ordered to work on a road with Robert Allen Jr. as overseer.(9)

The records then begin to show a more mature family man when Lazarus was granted 200 acres on the South River adjoining Isaac White and David Henderson on Nov. 11, 1769.(10) His presence is affirmed there in a lawsuit on a 1772 grant, involving the widow of Robert Allen Jr., that shows Lazarus' land came to a corner with the property of Thomas Walker, John Campbell and William Teas, whose family had owned the Waynesboro town site since 1755. Dr. Thomas Walker, one of the most famous frontiersmen in southwest VA, was reputedly the first English settler to visit Kentucky. On Sept. 29, 1779, Lazarus paid off a debt to Mary Reid Teas, the widow of neighbor William,(11) and the 1779 tax lists show Lazarus had gone to Rockbridge Co.,(12) an adjoining county created from Augusta and Botetourt Cos., the previous year; the citation may simply mean his farm lay in the new county.

The books on Lazarus close when the Augusta Co. Court minutes show that a lawsuit was dismissed May 24, 1782 because he had died.(13) Rockbridge Co. records show no mention of Lazarus or any other Inman through the year 1800, including possible guardianship papers on his minor children.

The records provide no hint of a wife or family for this Quaker-raised farmer. But probably in the early or mid-1760s, Lazarus married Elizabeth White (1740s), daughter of his neighbor, Isaac White and wife Jane Campbell White, and the granddaughter of James (1682-1754) and Margaret Campbell. (See separate section on the Whites and Campbells.)

Lazarus and Elizabeth appear to have had at least six sons: David (b. 1760s-1798/9), James William (1760s-1833), Henry, John (1778-August 7, 1838), Joseph (1780-1855) and Isaac (1781-1841). One possible daughter has surfaced: Rebecca (aka Hinman), who married James Watts Nov. 2, 1792 in Augusta Co. These relationships are pieced together through wills, probate papers, tax lists and shards of other information that fail to document the kinships conclusively. But circumstantial evidence supports the marriage of Elizabeth White to Lazarus:

- Isaac White bought or was granted property in the same Long Meadow-South River area in 1769, and in 1770 he added property adjoining Lazarus Inman.

- Isaac White served in Capt. Thompson's Augusta Co. militia comp; Lazarus served in the same company from the beginning of the Revolution to c. 1781.

- Isaac White's will in 1774 notes that daughter Elizabeth is married, but fails to mention her new surname.

- The 1753 will of James Campbell cites granddaughter Elizabeth White as a "child," placing her marriage and the birth of any children no sooner than c. 1760. All the children ascribed to Lazarus were born from the 1760s through 1781. No other Inmans are known to have lived in this heavily documented county during this era.

- Jane Campbell White was the sister of John Campbell, who is listed as the cornering neighbor of Lazarus Inman in 1772.

- Augusta Co. Land Commission records in 1780 show Isaac White was the son of John White, then dead, and his apparent brothers were David, John, William and perhaps Joseph (who moved from Augusta to the French Broad River of TN in 1790). According to Isaac's will, he had sons David, James, Isaac and Gordon (the youngest, b. 1761). David married Rebecca Robertson c. 1770s.

- Lazarus' ascribed children followed the pattern of the Whites: David, James William , Henry (an Inman family name), John, Joseph and Isaac among the sons and Rebecca among the possible daughters.

The data suggests an abrupt switch in the family naming pattern here: Lazarus, estranged at least by distance from elder brothers Ezekiel and Hezekiah, was influenced by his wife's family to adopt more familiar names than the more obscure Old Testament monikers chosen by his parents. These names (James, John, Joseph and, to lesser but significant extents, David, William and Isaac) persisted in these families for generations. Lazarus' son Isaac, who moved eventually to Madison Co., AL, where he died, was named Isaac White Inman (unconfirmed). Tax, land and census rolls in Augusta and Rockbridge Cos. provide few clues to the fate of Lazarus' family after his death; in fact, they are never mentioned again, with two exceptions:

The rolls of VA militia in the Revolutionary War, besides Lazarus in Capt. Thompson's company, list David and William Inman in Capt. Finley's company from Augusta Co. William was listed as absent in a 1780 general court martial of the county militia.

The 1787 tax list/census of Augusta Co. found William Inman "the only such surname in the county" living in a household with no other males over age 16, one horse and a cow, but no slaves. This household provided a home for very young male Inmans, such as James, Joseph and Isaac, or no other Inmans at all except for females. (This man apparently was James William Inman, second son of Lazarus.)

Jane Campbell White was still living in 1791, when final transactions took place to sell her late husband Isaac's farm to her nephew, Lt. (and county Sheriff) James Steele. The White sons all married in Augusta Co., but after the War of 1812, they moved to Blount Co., TN, with the possible exception of David who was living in Rockbridge Co. in 1820 with a possible son.

Children of Lazarus and Elizabeth White Inman

David Inman Sr. (c. 1760-1798)

David appears to have been born c. 1760, the eldest child of Lazarus and Elizabeth. After his father's death, David appears to have left VA, based on 1787 tax records, probably going to NC with his in-laws. David married the daughter of Jesse Jenkins, whose 1802 will in Rowan Co., NC contains a bequest for his grandson Jesse, son of David Inman.

Both David and his wife had died by then. Jesse Jenkins had a relationship unknown to Hugh Jenkins, who died in 1800 in Rowan Co., NC, but had lived c. 1780 in Augusta Co. where a daughter had been taken from his custody. Descendants of Hugh Jenkins moved before 1800 to Carter Co., TN, where numerous Inmans later settled.

Little trail exists for David before or after his Revolutionary War service in Augusta Co. County records contain NO mention of him, which buttresses the notion that he was quite young and landless while the family lived there; the county has extensive records that otherwise should have cited him. Again, records of Rockbridge Co., where the family supposedly moved c. 1779, have no mentions of Inmans either, according to officials in the county clerk's office, which checked probate, tax and land entries.

David is said to appear in the records of St. Luke's Parish, which included Surry and Rowan Cos., NC, the home of his father-in-law, but no specific data has been provided. By May 20, 1793, David was living in Greene Co., TN, where he filed suit against his second cousin, Daniel, son of Shadrach. The jury found for Daniel.

On Oct. 10, 1796, David was elected and commissioned an ensign in the militia of Jefferson Co., TN, the home of his cousin Abednego, with brother James William as the unit's captain.

This largely undocumented life ended in 1798/99 in Grainger Co., TN. The available data suggests that David moved to Jefferson and then Grainger Co., TN to help his brothers, James, William and Joseph, work at a family saltpetre mine and/or mill.(14) Later TN land survey records show an Inman family operated a mill on Inman's Mill Creek in Grainger Co.(15); similar records show an Inman family mined a saltpetre mine/cave in modern Claiborne Co., TN, which then lay in Campbell Co.

David's death produced one of the most valuable documents in the family history, although it was destroyed by flooding in the Grainger Co. records vault and current researchers must rely on the early notes of others. A likely unexpected, perhaps violent death had taken David by Nov. 21, 1799 when George Combs and Drury W. Brazil (Brazeale)(16) were given temporary letters of administration on his estate. On the same day, the court asked that the next of kin "William, Henry, Isaac, John or Joseph" step forward as administrators of the estate or explain why not.

No records have been found until 1803, when Josiah Clark, the brother or father of David's sister-in-law and perhaps a brother-in-law himself, received from the estate on Jan. 1. On Feb. 23, Major Lea, a Grainger Co. resident who came from Orange Co., NC, was appointed administrator of the estate. The inventory found that David had one slave, Jesse (named for his father-in-law?), 30 hogs and a grinding stone, which may have been part of the mill apparatus. The probate ended on Nov. 9, 1803 when Isaac Inman verified the estate's accounts.

Many family researchers have interpreted the Inmans who were asked to step forward as the sons of David. But considering his probable age and their known dates of birth, David was their older brother. He could have seemed like a father, however, especially to John, Joseph and Isaac, who were mere toddlers when Lazarus Inman died.

The children of David, who are not named in the estate settlement, have not been traced, but they likely include:

- Lazarus (1780s), who married Agnes Manuel in Greene Co., TN on March 3, 1814 at about age 30; they had three sons and five daughters, all under age 15, by 1830. The Blount Co. census records suggest he had a brother or cousin, William (b.c. 1800) who lived next door and married Mary Weir/Wear, daughter of Thomas and Mary Carson Weir, there in 1823. If they were brothers and William's dates are correct, they couldn't have been sons of David, who died too soon. If William's age was incorrect in the census and he was born sooner, he, too, could have been a son of David Sr. The migration of the Augusta Co. White uncles to Blount Co. after the War of 1812 suggests strongly that Lazarus, an orphan, had been raised by them.

- Rachel who married Solomon Webb in Grainger Co. The couple is found in Maury Co., TN in 1830. Solomon was born in the 1770s, Rachel in the 1780s.

- Wife of Josiah Clark of Carter Co., who received of David's estate. Josiah had served with a NC unit in the Revolution, but Clarks had moved to Carolina from Augusta Co. in the last half of the 18th century. Clark was a Carter Co. neighbor of David's Jenkins in-laws and possible brother or father of Susannah Clark (Mrs. John) Inman. Although Josiah was the same age or older than David, it is possible that he married one of David's daughters or, more likely, sisters. Josiah may have been paid simply for the expenses of caring for David's children and widow or tending to the estate.

- Jesse, David's son who disappears, is not mentioned in these probate papers, but appears in the 1802 will of Jesse Jenkins in Rowan Co., NC.

- David Alexander, (September 25, 1796, VA-after 1880, Christian Co., MO), who raised a family in Monroe Co., TN before the entire brood moved to Christian Co. between the 1850s and 1880s. David's contention that he was born in VA has complicated placing him in the Inman family structure. Both James William and David Sr. were commissioned militia officers in Jefferson Co., TN less than three weeks after this man's alleged birth in VA. David Alexander also was born before the marriage of John and Susannah Clark Inman in November 1796.

James William, however, likely played an important role in the child's early life because David Alexander named his first known son James L. A blacksmith, David married Elizabeth Carnes of Monroe County before 1830 and lived near her widowed mother, also named Elizabeth Carnes. In early tax rolls of Grainger County, James William and Joseph Inman lived near Michael Sr. and Michael Jr. Carnes. David and Elizabeth Carnes Inman had a daughter (who didn't survive in family records), and two men in their 20s (perhaps brothers, in-laws or farmhands) lived with the couple in 1830. Eventually, the couple had 11 children recorded in a later family Bible: James L. (1830), Nicholas Alexander (1831), Lucinda P. (1836), Winnie A. (1841), John Watts (1843), Frederick S. (1846), Frances C. (1848), David P.(1850), William B. (1851), Sarah and Elvina. An epidemic or unusual loss appears to have wiped out some of the family because only one live birth is reported between 1831 and 1841.

James William Inman (1760s-1830s)

This man has provided an enduring source of mystery for Inman researchers at least for 50 years. He was the known brother of Joseph and John Inman who died in Giles Co. TN but thanks to destroyed records and confusion about his name James W. Inman left little trail.

While Joseph, Isaac and John were listed among the next of kin for the late David Inman of Grainger Co. in 1799 James is omitted from the roster of brothers that included the relatively unknown William and Henry.

James according to Giles Co. census records almost certainly was the husband of Martha and father of several known children but many descendants have insisted that the couple's names were passed down over the generations as "William and Martha."

Piecing together the man

The only compelling solution came from Jymie Carol Ford Inman of Kerens, TX whose husband descends from this line and she forwarded the information that these relatives believed they descended from James William and Martha Elizabeth Inman.

When the bits and pieces of information for James and William Inman are fitted together few conflicts emerge but they are explained rather easily.

The principal difference concerns age. The only record of James' age comes from the 1830 Giles Co. census when the rolls show he was in his 50s or born in the 1770s. This census was notoriously erratic and error-filled as shown by duplicate columns that when transcribed could have been interpreted as completely different families.

William who served in the Revolution and was of age and paying taxes in 1787 in Augusta Co., VA must have been born by the mid-1760s.

Otherwise the data on William and James fit together perfectly and the symbiotic relationship between this man and his little brother, the childless Joseph, flows without a hitch for 60 years. The question remains: why the name change?

The older children of Lazarus Inman grew up on the farm next to their Indian-fighting grandfather Isaac White who had married relatively late in life and had a son James White not much older that James William. The family may have used the name William instead to differentiate between them. The Inmans with the strong adherence to family naming patterns also were apt for generations to give children familial first names but use the middle names on an everyday basis to distinguish them.

By 1793 William had moved to TN close to first cousin Abednego and Mary Ritchie Inman. Their oldest son William Hardin (or Henry in some versions) Inman (born Sept. 28 1779) was coming of age in the 1790s and James William Inman may have switched to his first name in legal documents, James then was not widely found among Inmans, to again distinguish the two men.

The author of The King's Mountain Men nevertheless appears to have been caught up in the confusion. He writes that Abednego Inman had two older sons: William Hardin Inman who married Eleanor Wilson which was correct; and James Wilson Inman who married Annie Lea. James Wilson Inman was the son of William Hardin and married Annie J. Lea in 1833; the author and/or his sources apparently had been caught up in the general confusion about James William who was so closely associated with Abednego in the early years of Jefferson Co. TN.

'William' of Augusta and TN

The first reference to this man comes in the Revolution when William and brother David served in Capt. Finley's company of the Augusta Co. militia. This militia formed the core of the Virginians dispatched south to help the Tennesseans of the Holston Valley battle the Indian allies of the British in the late 1770s and early 1780s.

In 1780 William is shown as absent during the general court martial of the Augusta Co. militia. According to Augusta Co. records the period also coincided with considerable turmoil in father Lazarus Inman's household. The 1779 tax records show Lazarus was "gone to Rockbridge" Co. to the south and in May 1782 a lawsuit was abated because Lazarus had died. But Rockbridge Co. officials found no Inman references thereafter.

The eldest son David appears to have gone south eventually to Surry or Rowan Cos. NC with his in-laws the Jenkins family and relatively near the much-older children of uncle Ezekiel Inman. Ezekiel's sons Abednego, Shadrach and Benjamin were found over much of the VA-NC-TN triangle in the period from 1775 to the mid-1780s when Abednego and Shadrach finally settled in Greene and Jefferson Cos. TN after the war.

No evidence exists that James William left the Augusta Co. area perhaps the farm of his grandmother until 1793. In 1787 'William' is found as a taxpayer with a horse a cow no slaves and no other adult males in the household; he may have had young Inman brothers in the household or neighboring related households.

In 1791 his grandmother Jane Campbell White completed the sale of the family farm to her nephew Lt. and Sheriff James Steele. By 1793 and 1794 'William' Inman had moved to the Jefferson Co. TN area where he enlisted as a private in the Doherty's Regiment of the Militia for the Territory South of the Ohio which was the formal designation then of the Tennessee Territory.(17)

On Oct. 10, 1796, 'James' was commissioned militia captain for Jefferson Co., TN, the home of his first cousin, Abednego. He had two ensigns: his brother David and second cousin Daniel, son of Shadrach Inman. This militia election strengthens the theory that James and William were the same men; otherwise, James would have been elected captain by his men during his tender and largely untried early 20s. His election more likely occurred because he had Revolutionary War experience buttressed by formal action on the TN frontier of the 1790s, not to mention the probable considerable influence of his mentor and cousin, Abednego of "long hunter" fame.

By 1799, 'William' and Joseph were taxpayers in Grainger Co. Joseph, at the age of 19, appears to have held title to the family land, where the late David and other family members farmed, fished, hunted, mined and milled. This 133-acre plot probably represented the first of the Inman family compounds, a tradition that lasted until 1930 in Christian Co., MO. For generations, the Inman fathers, Lazarus, James William and Elkanah, had an unfortunate pattern of dying and leaving young sons, who banded together in these compounds.

Inman's Mill Creek lay in Grainger Co., marking the site of a grain or sawmill; David's estate included a slave, 30 hogs and a grindstone. But this mill may, in large part, have belonged to Abednego, whose 1786 mill, across the county line, from Greene Co. may have been in Grainger Co.

James William's trail over the next eight years disappears. Around 1806 or 1807, he moved to Hickman (then-Dickson) Co. in Middle TN. Records in 1810 show he owned land still in Carter Co., TN, where the family shifted after the turn of the century. But the destruction of East TN census records through 1820, the burning of documents in Sullivan Co. in the Civil War, and the scattered condition of Carter and other counties' tax records have stymied attempts to track James William in this period. By 1815, 'William' was paying taxes across the border in Williamson Co., TN with his brother, Henry, who appeared on those tax rolls by 1810.

The Kerens, TX descendants also recall that James William was a circuit-riding Methodist minister. If so, such frontier preachers often lived in the homes of the faithful and seldom owned property or had other contact with authorities except through marriage licenses. Such arrangements would also explain James William's absence from the 1820 Middle TN census.

The first marriage of James William

Recollection of James W.'s family focus solely on his relationship with Martha, but she almost certainly was the second wife after an Elizabeth, surname unknown. The recollections of descendants of James William's son James C. about Martha Elizabeth as the wife and mother are likely an amalgam of the two women.

A gap exists in the children of James from as early as 1802 to as late as 1813. The early children appear to have remained in East TN when James went west as part of the Wilson expeditions of 1806 and later. All the later children moved from Giles Co., TN in late 1852 to Christian Co., MO; only the wife and children of John W. Inman from the earlier offspring moved to MO; they settled in a different location; and as Confederate sympathizers, they returned during the Civil War to TN.

Finally, the naming patterns for James' early children appear to have differed with the known, eldest granddaughters named Elizabeth; the later children named their early daughters Martha.

The data suggest that James William first married an Elizabeth or Sarah Elizabeth, although it is possible that all these references to Elizabeth concerned Elizabeth White Inman, wife of Lazarus.

- The first possible son, David Alexander (Sept. 15, 1796, VA-1880s, Christian Co., MO), had a first daughter by 1830 who died and is not recorded in that family's personal records thereafter.

- Possible son Lazarus C. (1797/8, Grainger Co.-1860s, OR) had an eldest daughter Elizabeth.

-Son James C. (1798/9-Sept. 11, 1844), had two eldest daughters whose names are unrecorded.

- Son John W. (1800) named his eldest daughter Elizabeth.

- Daughter Sarah (1801/2), who married Philemon Lacey, has not been traced.

- Possible son Ezekiel (1804) had an eldest daughter Elizabeth Ellen.

- Possible son Andrew Jackson (1805) named his oldest daughter Mary Jane and the second, Martha C. He is, however, more likely the son of James William's brother John.

From this point, until December 1813, James has no children who have been documented or even suggested. James William likely married in the early 1790s in VA to a Sarah Elizabeth, perhaps an Alexander from the Alexander neighbors, who died c. 1805.

To Hickman Co., TN

In 1806, Adam Wilson Jr. of Greene Co., TN and at least three of his sons (William, Adam III and Joseph) moved to Dickson Co., TN. Adam became the first permanent white settler of what was created as Hickman Co. on Jan. 1, 1808, according to Goodspeed's history of the area, and Spence's 1900 history of Hickman Co. notes that Adam planted the first corn crop there, simply clearing the canebrake to make room.

Between 1807 and 1810, Goodspeed's says, the first settlers of Lick Creek were James Inman and Henry Mayberry (a family closely related to the Inmans found in Grainger and other East TN counties as well as Giles). James had moved there with his brother Joseph, who in May 1808 was elected second major of the county militia. They were joined by Samuel Faught, a blacksmith, who two years before had been a neighbor of their brother Isaac Inman in modern Warren Co., TN and whose family would become prominent among the Inmans in Giles Co. and MO.

James may have brought his family, but the available evidence suggests otherwise. All these early children who have been traced had ties through 1830 in Carter Co. or other East TN locales. James likely left his motherless children behind with brother John and Susannah Clark Inman or other relations while making the trip west, after the death of their mother. Such dispersal of children almost became an Inman family tradition. Possible son Ezekiel, after his wife Sally Sanders died in Parke Co., IN, simply left his children with Sanders in-laws and started two new families in Illinois. When Inmans died in Giles Co., the children appear to have been parceled out among relations. When Grace Inman McConnell died in 1927 in Greene Co., MO, her Inman siblings divided up the children.

Joseph had been living in Hickman Co., TN when he enlisted as a second major in a West TN unit in the Creek War, but no reference to such military service for James (then in his late 40s or early 50s) has been found. Like many men of Middle TN in the Creek War, James may have enlisted in the 1st Alabama (actually Mississippi Territory) militia, and such records usually are not listed in TN indexes.

Spence's 1900 history of Hickman Co. makes no reference to James or Joseph Inman, although like all local histories, it most prominently includes information on early ancestors of residents who were still living there and makes sparing allusions to prominent pioneers like the Wilson family.

In Middle TN, references appear for a 'William' Inman along with Henry in 1815 Williamson Co., adjacent to Hickman. Henry also appears in 1810. While other Inmans moved into this area, no Henrys or Williams are documented in those lines for this era; and these men appear to have been James William and his brother Henry, who do not appear in the 1820 census of Middle TN. Joseph, too, appeared in 1810 as a bondsman in the marriage of Samuel Faught and Nancy Dean.

If James William became a circuit-riding Methodist minister, the move to Giles Co. may have coincided with his retirement, around age 65.

Martha Wilson Inman

James' second likely marriage came to Martha Wilson (1780, NC-May 1860, Christian Co., MO) in Hickman Co., TN, between 1808 and 1813. She was the sister of Joel Wilson and apparent daughter of William Wilson, the first presiding judge of the Hickman Co. Court in 1808, or his father, Adam Jr., the first permanent white settler.

A McMinn Co., TN family history says that Adam (Sr. or Jr.) and his brother James came from Ireland to America, and James settled in East TN while Adam went to Missouri. This version truncates the family history, although Adam III of Hickman Co., TN did settle in Randolph Co., MO around 1823.

Adam (Sr. or Jr.) and James Wilson were assigned to road duty in Rowan Co., NC in 1775 along with Charles Wakefield, an Inman in-law, and Benjamin Inman, the brother of Abednego. In 1782, both Adam Wilson Sr. and Jr. and Abednego Inman began receiving numerous land grants (and re-grants) in Greene Co., TN as the war drew to a close. In 1784 in Greene Co., Adam Wilson witnessed a will with Abednego Inman as an executor and wife Mary 'Mollie' Ritchie Inman as a co-witness.

In Abednego's family, son William H. married Eleanor Wilson, and daughter Hannah married Daniel Wilson; but the parents of these Wilsons has not been determined. It likely was James or Benjamin, brothers of Adam; James became first sheriff of Greene Co., TN while Benjamin became a prominent East TN official.

Adam Wilson Sr. had died by 1812, leaving property in Greene Co., TN, which son Adam Jr. of Hickman Co. paid taxes upon. Adam Jr. died in the 1820s, and his son moved to MO.

The records of Hickman Co., unfortunately, were destroyed in 1864 when Confederates burned the courthouse as Union troops advanced; piecing together the relationships in the Wilson families there will take some time. This courthouse fire also destroyed the marriage records that would confirm the union of James and Martha.

The family of Joel Wilson (NC, 1785) and wife Mary were intimately connected with James and Martha. Joel appears first in Maury Co. in 1811, age 26, paying taxes, and came to Giles by 1830. The couple had at least nine children.

Among the Wilson ties with James and Martha's children:

- Daughter Eliza Louisa Inman Glover married James H. Wilson, son of Joel and Mary, as her second husband.

- Son Elkanah had three sons who married James H. Wilson's daughters. Elkanah's son David, who married Cintha Charles, still named his eldest son Joel.

- Daughter Nancy Ann married Francis P. Wilson, Joel and Mary's son. Their son married the granddaughter of Elkanah.

All these cousin marriages were, of course, legal, and a saying passed down was: "It's best to marry within the family."

To Giles Co., TN and Christian Co., MO

By early 1827, the Inmans had settled or resettled in Giles Co. for Andrew (son of either James or John) and Isaac (son of John) Inman witnessed the survey documents for Samuel Faught on 25 acres along Dry Creek.

On Sept. 10, 1827, both James and Joseph Inman received state land grants for 25 acres each, apparently in the Dry/Big Creek area of northwest Giles Co. The land lay just south of the village of Campbellsville (the sons of Lazarus Inman were Campbell descendants). Andrew signed the occupant entry book in Weakley Co. of West TN, only age 18 to 22.

By the 1830 Giles Co. census, James, Joseph and their families are shown side by side with only one other Inman, Z. or Zachariah, living in the county. Zachariah had settled in the Lawrence Co.-Giles Co. area by 1812 with his father John and Uncle Meshack of SC and married Miticia Dickey. When his father and uncle, and their families, moved west, Zachariah stayed behind with the Dickeys from SC.

None of James' early children are found in the county with the possible exception of a daughter, b. 1790s, in the household, apparently with three children under 10. This woman, however, could have been another relation. The household does include all the known later children of James and Martha.

In the 1830s, other children were drawn to the area. Both John W. and James C. Inman had come to Giles by 1833 when John sold him land. James C(ampbell) Inman may have been a circuit-riding Methodist minister who drew an assignment that included Old Salem Methodist Church on Dry Creek.

Brother John Inman moved to Giles Co. around 1836 with his son Isaac from the Huntsville, AL area, just to the south, but John died Aug. 7, 1838.

James William died sometime during the 1830s, but all attempts to determine when have failed. No tombstones in Old Salem or Campbellsville cemeteries correspond to the man. Many stones in Old Salem have been buried or permanently lost when the isolated cemetery went untended after the church was destroyed by a tornado and the congregation and its families dispersed. A restoration may uncover more stones. If James William was a retired Methodist circuit rider, he almost certainly is buried there.

After his death, Martha continued living with her son, Elkanah D., and his wife Sarah Moore, probably on James William's original grant, in the 1840 census. But as Elkanah's family grew, Martha moved in with widowed daughter Eliza Louisa after her husband Finley Glover died in 1847.

Martha and her entire second family moved to Christian Co., MO in late 1852 which found a major exodus of Giles and Maury Co., TN settlers to that area. Joining them were all but two sons of John W. (a child by the first marriage) and Isaac Inman, the son of James William's brother John. By Jan. 2, 1853, John W.'s son James C. Inman owned livestock and 200 acres on the tax rolls of Greene Co., MO, which then included northern Christian, and Elkanah's last son was born in Christian Co. in 1853.

Martha was still living by 1860 when the census found her with her daughter Nancy Ann and husband Francis P. Wilson in Porter Township, Christian Co., southwest of the current city of Nixa.

Some believe she died about May 1860, but no stones or other records document her death. She likely is buried with son Elkanah in a family graveyard that was destroyed in the late 1800s. The graveyard is believed to have existed along current Route M south of Missouri 14 in Christian Co., also southwest of Nixa.

Martha had lived to see her family grow prosperous on the edge of Guin Prairie in the Ozarks frontier. She didn't witness the days of horror and depravity that followed as the Civil War laid waste to the area.

Children of James William and Elizabeth Inman

David Alexander Inman (Sept. 26, 1796-1880s)

David Alexander, a possible son of James William and twin of Jane, raised a family in Monroe Co., TN before the entire brood moved to Christian County, MO between the 1850s and 1880s. David Alexander may have been the son of David of Augusta/Grainger, rather than the only other prospect: James William. James was commissioned a militia captain in Jefferson Co., TN on Oct. 10, 1796, less than three weeks after this man's birth in VA, which makes that match unlikely. David Alexander also was born before the marriage of John and Susannah Clark Inman in November 1796.

The name David Alexander, however, appears numerous times in the Inman genealogy and probably represents the full name of David Sr. who died in 1798/9 in Grainger Co., TN. His father Lazarus was close to the Alexanders of Augusta Co. by 1760.

James William, however, likely played an important role in this man's early life because David Alexander named his first known son James L.

A blacksmith, David married Elizabeth Carnes of Monroe Co. before 1830 and lived near her widowed mother, also named Elizabeth Carnes. In early tax rolls of Grainger Co., James William and Joseph Inman lived near Michael Sr. and Michael Jr. Carnes.

David and Elizabeth Carnes Inman had a daughter (who didn't survive in family records), and two men in their 20s 'perhaps brothers, in-laws or farmhands' lived with the couple in 1830.

Eventually, the couple had 11 children recorded in a later family Bible: James L. (1830), Nicholas Alexander (1831), Lucinda P. (1836), Winnie A. (1841), John Watts (1843), Frederick S. (1846), Frances C. (1848), David P. (1850), William B. (1851), Sarah and Elvina. An epidemic or unusual loss appears to have wiped out some of the family because only one live birth is reported between 1831 and 1841.

Nicholas Alexander led the family move to Christian Co. in the 1850s when he moved in with the Weaver family of Ozark and began smithing with a fellow tenant, Samuel Faught, son of Samuel Faught of Giles Co., TN and nephew of the late Wiley B. Faught. Sr.

Nicholas and Samuel closed their smithy when the Civil War began; Nicholas buried his tools and enlisted. When he returned, Nicholas reopened, but at a farm he had owned south of Springfield. When a post office was opened there in 1878, the crossroads needed a name and residents reportedly united behind 'Nicks-A' or Nixa, a combination of his first name and initial.

Nicholas, wife Mary Jane Roberts and his parents are buried in Payne Cemetery northwest of Nixa.

Lazarus C. Inman (1797/8-1860s)

Lazarus C. born in Grainger Co., according to Oregon sources married Susannah Stover, d/o Daniel Stover Jr. (b. 1770s) or Christian Stover Sr. and relative of Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Andrew Johnson, on Feb. 18, 1823 in Carter Co., TN before JP John Williams. Lazarus' name was recorded as Ingram in marriage records, but correctly in later legal documents.

(Researcher-author Buis T. Inman assigned Lazarus C. as the son of Samuel Inman, the son of Meshack who was killed by Indians while exploring with Daniel Boone in 1767. How Lazarus C. ended up in Carter Co., East TN long after Samuel moved to Davidson Co., Middle TN is unexplained. If Lazarus was the orphaned youngest son of David Inman 'a more plausible explanation' tracing his whereabouts in the early 1800s is almost impossible.)

The Stovers, too, had come from Augusta Co., VA and had close connections to the Campbells. Peter Rufnaugh (Rufnedt), a German settler, sold Daniel Stover Sr. 196 acres on the South River at the mouth of Hawksbill Creek on April 11, 1746. On Feb. 15, 1748, the local courts made Daniel Stover Sr. guardian of John, Mary and James Campbell, the orphans of John Campbell (likely lone son of Robert, son of John). Except for a 1753 road petition, the Stover name does not appear again until Daniel buys two tracts on Aug. 13, 1773 in Augusta Co.

Immediately after their marriage, Lazarus C. and Susan moved to Indiana, where they had four children including twins, and then moved back to Carter Co., TN, by the 1830 census, when he was living with or next door to his sister Sarah (Mrs. Philemon) Lacey. The move to Indiana may have coincided with Stover family relocations, including those of the Lincolns to the KY-IL-IN triangle, or the move of other Inmans, who appear in Hardin Co., KY and Monroe/Dubois and other IN counties at that time as part of a general, Quaker-oriented migration from TN.

By 1840 Lazarus was living in Madison Co., AL. He became or already had been close to Abednego's son John Ritchie Inman and his children, and Lazarus C. moved to east-central MO in 1843 with John R.'s sons James Madison Inman, John W. Inman, Joel C. Inman and their sisters, Elizabeth W. Inman (Mrs. Joseph P.) Woodruff, Jane Inman (Mrs. George B.) Woodruff and Caroline Matilda Inman (Mrs. Benjamin) Woodruff. The Woodruffs settled in extreme southwest Franklin Co., MO while Lazarus and Susan went to Bourbeuse Township, Gasconade Co., MO nearby. Lazarus and Susan's eldest child, Elizabeth (1824, IN), however, went to Franklin County for her marriage license.

(The grandson of George B. and Jane Inman Woodruff, John Woodruff, became attorney for the Frisco Railroad, a land developer and one of the wealthiest men of 20th century Springfield, MO, developing the Hickory Hill Country Club and owning half of the spa village of Siloam Springs, AR.)

The 1850 census shows Lazarus and Susan living with Isaac (1827, IN), David W. (1830, IN), Teresa (1830, IN), Thomas (1845, MO) and L., a male (1850, MO), next door to Elizabeth and her husband, Milton M. Childers, who had two small sons and a daughter. Not far away was another daughter of John Ritchie Inman, Sarah Inman (Mrs. John) Jump.

At least Lazarus Inman, Joel C. Inman and Benjamin Woodruff and their families headed out on the Oregon Trail in 1852 and 1853. Benjamin died en route, although the family record says he died in the Colorado Gold Rush. Lazarus arrived in Oregon in September 1852 and claimed land there on June 22, 1853. He appears to have died by 1863 when son Isaac S. sold part of the claim. David W. Inman married Mary Richardson in Oregon.

This information on Lazarus C. may cause re-evaluation of whether he is a son of James William Inman of Giles Co., TN, where Lazarus apparently had little if any contact. The secret lies in the relationship to Sarah Inman (Mrs. Philemon) Lacey.

James C. Inman (1798/1801- Sept. 11, 1844)

Descendants of this man provided the information about the dual identity of James William Inman, but even less is known about this son. He does not appear before 1833 when he bought land from his brother John W. Inman in Giles Co., and the two are living nearby in the 1840 census.

James C.'s wife and children, however, may have been the extra persons in the household of James William Inman in the 1830 census. James C. 'and not his father' may have been the circuit-riding Methodist minister.

James married Sarah, who is shown as age 51 in the 1850 census. But no particulars about this marriage have been discovered.

James died, apparently in the 1844 black tongue epidemic, and he was buried in Campbellsville Cemetery. The day of his death and birth, however, is identical, suggesting that the mason mistranscribed the entire date of birth, which is shown as Sept. 11, 1811; the census shows he was born in the 1790s, perhaps 1801.

James had at least three sons and four daughters, but only two of the females are accounted for:

Joseph C. (1825-1862), a blacksmith and minister, married Elizabeth Ann Spears and then Elvira J. McAllister before they moved to Gainesville, Lauderdale Co., Alabama in late 1860 from Lawrence Co., TN.

He and Elizabeth Ann had sons John Riley and (James) William (M.). By Elvira, he had (Joseph) Jackson. Joseph C. was an heir of his great-uncle Major Joseph Inman; the major's will gave Joseph C. and brother John C. possession of a slave, Elias, who was freed on Sept. 13, 1855. Joseph C. changed his mind after the emancipation had been registered and sued for ownership; the court ruled that Elias was to be transported back to the West Coast of Africa just before the Emancipation Proclamation. The case went to the TN Supreme Court.

After Joseph C.'s death, attorney E.T. Taliaferro became guardian of his children. Joseph C. left property on Richland Creek in the 19th District of Giles County.

Around 1854, Joseph C. took in the orphaned son of his cousin, John D. Inman, son of John W. and Hannah Simmerley Moore Inman. John D. had married c. 1851 and fathered a son, Joseph Walker Inman, on Jan. 11, 1852. Shortly afterward, both parents were killed or otherwise died. John D.'s family, except for brothers David A. and perhaps Joseph, had moved to Christian Co., MO in late 1852, and Joseph C. became the guardian, according to the young orphan's descendants.

The 1860 census shows Joseph C. Inman in Lawrence Co. with a Joseph W., age 8, out of order, indicating he was not a member of the immediate family. When Joseph C. moved to Alabama, the child moved in with his uncle, David A. Inman, and later his widowed aunt, Francis Faught Inman.

John C. (1827-1858), also a blacksmith, married Sarah N. (Nancy?) and fathered James Nathaniel (1843, to Benton Co., TN), Joseph Wiley, Susan E. (1845-1874, m. E.J. Finch and moved to Carroll Co.) and Nancy Jane (1847-Oct. 7, 1879). He owned 272 acres in the 5th District of Giles County, near the Parker nephews of Mary Ann McConnell Polly Parker McConnell. After his death, Sarah remarried to Wiley Smothers in January 1865. Nancy Jane married R.N. Anderson and inherited 100 acres in Giles Co. from her father; she swapped the land for property in Benton Co., TN, where several in the family moved. She didn't like the new home and moved to Carroll Co., TN, where she died. She left her husband with two very young children, Alonzo and Sarah Elizabeth.

Susannah (1832).

Cyntha (1834).

James Jasper (1836). He was living with brother Joseph C. in Lawrence Co. after their father's death.

John W. Inman (1800-June 6, 1852)

John W., born in Tennessee, on Jan. 11, 1821 married a young widow, Hannah Simmerley Moore of Carter Co., TN, the daughter of the German emigrant Adam Simmerley and Hannah Nowland. James Lacey and the prominent Abraham Tipton of Carter Co. acted as sureties. The elder Simmerleys had been married in 1790 in Carter Co.; their daughter Hannah was briefly married to a Moore before her vows with Inman in 1820 probably to the brother of James Moore, husband of Jane Inman, and uncle of Sarah Moore, wife of Elkanah Inman.

John W. stayed behind in Carter Co. with Hannah's family, brother Lazarus C. and his sister Sarah, the wife of Philemon Lacy, even after his father had relocated to Giles Co.

Making their move in the 1830s, John W. and Hannah raised their family on a farm on Dry Creek Road, near the Faughts and Parkers. He became one of the wealthiest landowners of the entire county, showing real estate holdings worth $10,000 in the 1850 census.

Born to John W. and Hannah were:

James C. (1821), who married Francis Faught, daughter of Wiley B. and Elizabeth Ann Wood Faught.

Betsy (1825).

Martha (1824), who married Isham Faught, son of Wiley B. and Elizabeth Ann Wood Faught, and moved to Christian Co., MO. The Faughts moved to Denton, TX about 1870.

John D. (1826-1854), who married c. 1851 and had a son, Joseph Walker Inman on Jan. 11, 1852. John and his wife (unknown) were killed, according to descendants.

On March 7, 1859, brother James C. Inman filed power of attorney in Greene Co., MO for his brother-in-law Moses M. Faught of Giles to settle the estate of his brother, John D. Brother Joseph Inman, then of California, filed similar papers in Giles for brother David A. Inman to act as attorney on June 17, 1859.

Little Joseph, the orphan, first lived with his father's cousin, Joseph C. Inman, at least through 1860 in Lawrence Co. When Joseph C. moved to Gainesville, AL in late 1860, little Joseph went to live with his uncle David A. When Francis Faught (Mrs. James C.) Inman returned from Christian Co., MO and her husband died, she took custody of young Joseph. He was still living with Francis and her children when they appear in the 1870 Obion Co., TN census.

Little Joseph soon bought a Giles Co. farm from his uncle David, but in 1881, he relocated to Danville, Logan Co., AR. This Inman may have been the relative south of the Boston Mountains in Arkansas that the Christian Co. Inmans frequently visited, sometimes in refuge from the courts as the accused or witnesses. Both Jack and Finley Glover Inman, sons of Elkanah, as well as their nephew John Inman found wives in Arkansas; and Robert Inman, grandson of Elkanah, said he was born in 1899 on the trip back from Arkansas to pick up his uncle John, who had been in hiding and married there.

Martha (1827?), who married Isham Faught, son of Wiley B. and Elizabeth Ann Wood Faught, and moved to Christian Co., MO. The Faughts moved to Denton, TX about 1870.

David Alexander (1830). David A. stayed in Giles Co. when the rest of the family moved to Missouri; he attended the family farm and his blacksmith shop while entering sundry business dealings with the Parkers (the family of Mary Ann Polly Parker McConnell) that resulted in repeated court cases after the Civil War. David A., who owned property southwest of Campbellsville, TN, married Martha Puryear, daughter of Henry D. Puryear, in 1854. They eventually moved to AL in 1888 and to Texas in 1898 where David and Martha died. David A. and Martha had at least one son, John H. (1857).

Joseph (1833) went to California where on June 17, 1859, he filed a power of attorney in Giles for brother David A. to settle the estate of their dead brother, John D., in Giles.

Elizabeth (1835), probably Betsy above. Marriage records probably are lost in the Giles or Christian Co. courthouse fire/occupation.

Andrew (1839), who married Sarah Ann Stephenson at age 18 in 1857 in Greene (now Christian Co.), MO and had a daughter, Martha, on Aug. 9, 1859. The couple is not listed on the 1860 county census.

Thomas (1840) m. Rebecca Faught Rule/Ruyle of Ozark, MO, and returned to Obion Co., TN.

Nancy Ann (1841).

(Living with the John W. Inman family in 1850 in Giles was farmhand James Moore, age 17, probably Hannah's nephew by her first marriage, son of James Moore Sr. and brother/nephew of Sarah Moore Inman, wife of Elkanah.)

John W. died on June 6, 1852, just before the family moved to Missouri, and he is buried in Old Salem Cemetery. His son Andrew applied to have brother James C. named guardian on March 10, 1854 in Greene County, MO. In September, James C. was named official guardian of minors (under age 20) Andrew, Thomas and Nancy Ann.

These Inmans continued the family's minor slaveholding tradition, and in 1854, James C. applied in Greene County Circuit Court for access to a trust established for his minor brothers and sisters with the sale of three slaves in Giles County.

In 1866, Hannah Simmerley Moore Inman died, and son Thomas B. quickly liquidated the family holdings in Ozark and on the farms and returned to Tennessee with his new wife, Rebecca Faught Rule, after 1868.

James C. Inman

James C. and his wife Francis married on Jan. 9, 1845, before the families headed for Missouri. Probably with the help of capital from his father's estate and control over the minors' holdings, James C. assembled 738 acres of land on the western edge of Ozark, according to 1856 tax records. The area now includes the Fasco plant, Chapman cemetery and several subdivisions near the intersection of Highways 65 and 14.

The 1860 agricultural census shows he was farming 460 acres, worth $9,375, in Finley Township west of Ozark. He raised 200 bushels of wheat and 2,000 of corn that year along with rye and oats for the six horses. Few farmers in the county were more prosperous.

Frances had been one of 12 children born to Wiley B. Faught Sr. (1799-1841), a Georgian, and his wife Elizabeth Ann, who moved to Giles and Lawrence Cos., TN in the 1820s.

Frances and James C. settled in Ozark next door to her mother Elizabeth Ann Wood Faught (1792), an Alabama native, and her children Rebecca Faught Rule (1838) and James J. Faught (1842). Also living in town was cousin Samuel B. Faught, a blacksmith. Brothers Levi C. married Mary Jane Keltner of Nixa, and John W. took as his wife Mary Ann McConnell, also of the Nixa area.

James C. was the county surveyor who laid out the new town of Ozark after it was named the county seat in 1859, and he quickly assembled more land in anticipation of growth.

Through May 22, 1861, James C. was still buying Christian Co. land, but after the bloody, nearby battle of Wilson's Creek, he began selling: on Oct. 19, 1861, he sold 300 acres to Benjamin Chapman for $3,800. The cemetery, however, he sold to Thomas Hanks as part of a 17- to 18-acre deal in 1861.

Then James C. is believed to have entered military service, apparently in Arkansas, for the Confederates.

On Aug. 22, 1863, he bought 1000 acres in Lawrence Co., AR from John A. Lindsay near Smithville. James C. may have planned to relocate to Arkansas when hostilities ended.

Meanwhile, between October 1861 and May 1862, as the Civil War raged, Frances Faught Inman drove her family by wagon from Christian Co. down Crowley Ridge to Helena, AR, where brother Moses met her at the Mississippi River and returned the Inmans to Giles Co. They evidently were Confederate sympathizers because the last son born, Sterling Price in 1862, was named for the Confederate general then marauding across Missouri.

James C. Inman died Dec. 21, 1865, reportedly in fallout from the war, after he returned to Giles Co.

Francis, his wife, conducted land transactions in Christian County after his death and appears to have visited the area at least though 1868 with brother Moses M. Faught to help handle the dispersal of the family property. On Jan. 16, 1868, her brothers Levi C. and Wiley B. were named administrators of James C.'s estate with George W. Parker and Thomas B. Inman as securities.

In 1866, she and the family had become wards of Giles Co., but they moved and built large farms and stores in Obion and Dyer Cos., TN. The move to Obion Co. came after she had visited Christian Co. in 1868 to handle property details, and Francis brought her mother, Elizabeth Ann Wood Faught, who loathed MO, back to Obion.

Francis died in Newbern Nov. 17, 1903, but is buried in Old Salem Cemetery in Giles alongside her husband. James C. and his wife Frances (1822) had seven children:

Mary Elizabeth Mollie (April 27, 1846-1922) who married George W. Parker, son of Alfred W., and settled in Newbern, TN. George was the great-nephew of Polly Parker McConnell and the great-grandson of Jeremiah and Milly Robey Parker. The Parkers had moved to Newburn, Dyer Co., TN by 1870.

Martha Jane (March 10, 1850). According to a newspaper report, Frances' daughter Martha Jane (1850) died of pneumonia at the home of uncle Levi Carl Faught in Nixa on May 23, 1868. The tombstone reflects those dates. She is buried in the Chapman Family Cemetery on the west edge of Ozark, south of Highway 14, near the Fasco Mfg. Co. plant.

Sarah Hannah (April 29, 1852-Oct. 20, 1893), who died single in Dyer County, TN.

James M. (Jan. 8, 1855-Nov. 13, 1874), who died of malaria.

Franklin Columbus 'Lum' (Feb. 29, 1856-November 1927), a business man in Newbern, TN, who co-owned and -operated the Industrial District of Newbern, a wagon spoke factory, by 1895 and in 1902 added a cotton gin. The business sold in 1918. Lum married Annie Thompson in 1897 and Annie Ramsey in 1907. His great-granddaughter, Karen Knox Inman (1962), is an Inman family researcher in Stone Mountain, GA.

Thomas Wiley (Aug. 15, 1859, MO-1860), probably buried in unmarked grave in Chapman Cemetery, Ozark.

Sterling Price (May 16, 1862, TN-Jan. 31, 1932). He was a partner with his brother Lum in the Inman Bros. enterprises.

Sarah Inman Lacey (1802)

Sarah Inman married Philemon Lacey in Carter Co., TN on April 25, 1819 before JP Jeremiah Campbell, the same JP who later married her brother Lazarus. It is unknown what, if any, this Campbell had to the Inmans' Campbell ancestors. Sarah and Philemon were still living in Carter Co. in the 1830 census with one son. The children have not been traced; at least four Philemon Laceys lived in Carter Co. in this era.

Ezekiel (1804-1873)

The parentage of the notorious Ezekiel Inman is among the most hotly researched and contested in Inman family circles. Most members of this man's family were born in Indiana and moved to southern Greene Co. in the 1840s. The naming patterns are identical.

 

Children of James William and Martha Wilson Inman

Eliza Louisa 'Lizzie' (December 1813-1910/17)

Lizzie, who also was known by her middle name, was probably born in Hickman Co., TN, possibly the twin sister of Elkanah, and moved with the family to Giles Co., TN, in the late 1820s.

She married Finley Glover in the 1830s in Giles County, and his name was passed down through the Inman family for generations. They appear to have had no children, and Finley Glover died before Aug. 7, 1847 when his estate was settled before the Giles County Chancery Court.

Widow Lizzie was living with her mother Martha in 1850. Before leaving for Missouri, this fleet-footed widow, however, remarried Feb. 10, 1852 to James H. Wilson, the widower of Sarah Emily Hathorn and a cousin through Lizzie's mother Martha Wilson Inman. James H. had four daughters, Mary, Margaret, Nancy Lavanda and Sarah Catherine, all of whom came to Missouri. Three married sons of Lizzie's brother, Elkanah.

James H. Wilson died during the late summer of 1865, and by 1870, Lizzie was living with Charley and Matilda Herndon as a domestic, next door to Lizzie's sister, widow Nancy Ann Inman Wilson. Nancy Ann had married James H.'s brother, Francis P., who was killed in 1864 in the Civil War.

On Sept. 7, 1871, William Sanders married Eliza L. Inman Wilson before B.F. Hollowell in Christian County. Although from Kentucky, Sanders, too, appears to have been related, at least by marriage. He was the brother of Sally Sanders, the first wife of Ezekiel Inman, Lizzie's possible half-brother.

William ranked among the leading county farmers, with 100 of his 300 acres in Finley and Porter Townships in cultivation in 1870, valued at $3,000. He ranged four horses, four milk cows, six other cattle and 15 hogs in 1869 while growing 200 bushels of winter wheat, 450 bushels of corn, 200 bushels of oats and 50 bushels of Irish potatoes; he milled 25 gallons of molasses, for farm production worth $900 in the still war-stressed economy.

William had married first to fellow Kentuckian Rachel Wickersham on Sept. 14, 1839, but she died in the 1860s in Christian Co. They had seven daughters, all born in Missouri:

Susan (1841) married Joseph W. Curbow on Feb. 5, 1863

Sarah J. (1842) married Thomas B. Manley of the James River valley on Jan. 3, 1866.

Mary Ellen (Jan. 6, 1844-April 18, 1935) married her cousin, John A. Richard Sanders, son of Elijah and Charlotta Saxton Sanders, on Oct. 18, 1863.

Maria E. (1847-before 1860, d.s.p.)

Rachel V.A. (1848) married Jesse Young Nov. 13, 1870.

Rebecca (1850) is found in the 1860 census, but not in 1870. No marriage is recorded for her in Christian Co.

Margaret C. (1852) married Henry C. Willoughby Sept. 27, 1874.

William and Louisa C.(18) are shown living together in 1880 on a farm southwest of Nixa. William died Dec. 28, 1891, and Lizzie moved in with her sister Nancy Ann Wilson, her son William Daniel Wilson, and his wife, Sarah Ann Inman, the granddaughter of Elkanah. William had just been released from prison for the murder of his cousin's husband and soon began scouting for land in the newly opened Indian Territory.

In 1900, Lizzie was still living with the couple and Nancy in Porter Township.

Lizzie had an independent source of income, either from the estate of her third husband, William Sanders, or a pension based on the service of Sanders or, more likely, second husband James H. Wilson. In 1905, Bill Wilson filed suit against her in Christian Co. Circuit Court.(19) On Sept. 21, 1905, the Ozark Tribune reported that the case had been arbitrated and the settlement confirmed; Bill and Sarah Elizabeth were awarded $385 and court costs. The suit apparently tapped Lizzie's funds for repayment of the room, board and other expenses that Bill incurred.

Accounts of Lizzie's personality have not been passed down; she may have been a penny-pinching, demanding crone who provoked the suit after many years of generous support by Bill and the Wilson family. However, the suit "once of a common nature on the frontier, but no longer" contributes to the Jekyll-and-Hyde picture of Bill Wilson.

Lizzie sold a large tract of land, almost 160 acres southeast of Nixa, to John R. 'Pete' Edwards in November 1905 for $2,000. The sale likely came as the family was disposing of assets to move to Oklahoma, which came in mid-1907.

The Wilson-Inman families ended up in Craig Co., OK. Rather than the Wilsons, Lizzie moved in nearby with her nephew Finley Glover Inman, son of Elkanah, and his wife Mary Louisa, daughter May and son-in-law Tom Robison. Hard feelings may have persisted from the lawsuit with W.D. Wilson.

Aunt Lizzie died there before 1917, and she is buried in Garden Grove Cemetery, near Centerview, OK, beside Nancy. They are surrounded by Sanders graves, no doubt the resting place of relatives of Lizzie's last husband, William.

William had five nephews, sons of Elijah and Charlotta Sanders - James W. (m. 1. Eliza C., 2. Lizzie Tipper), George (m. Elizabeth Patterson), William (m. Emily E. Wise), Francis (m. Sarah A. Wallace) and Joseph (m. Martha J. Barnes) who may have resettled in Oklahoma.

Elkanah D. (1815-1867) and Sarah Moore Inman

The youngest son of James (1774/8, VA - 1830s, Giles Co., TN) and Martha Wilson Inman (1780, NC - Christian Co., MO) was Elkanah D. (c. 1814 - July 7, 1866), who was born in Middle Tennessee, probably Hickman or Williamson Cos.

He apparently was named for Elkanah Dulaney, a native of Southwest VA, who moved to Blountville, Sullivan Co., TN and became its first doctor in 1799; he may have treated much of the Inman family in adjacent Carter Co. and attended its considerable number of births. (Elkanah's middle name remains unconfirmed. He signed most legal documents as E. D. The other options are David or Daniel.)

Elkanah was the brother - possibly twin - of Eliza Inman Glover Wilson Sanders, who was born in December 1813 and also came to Missouri with her second husband, James H. Wilson.

Elkanah married his second cousin Sarah Moore (1819 - May 1894) in the 1830s in Giles Co., TN, where the original records have been destroyed. Sarah's identity is confirmed by Missouri and Oklahoma death certificates of their children. The death certificate of a daughter, Ann, said her mother was known as "Sally," the common nickname for Sarah although no other records show this usage.

Sarah was the daughter of James Moore (1792, NC), who married Elkanah's cousin Jane Inman, in 1814 in Carter Co., TN, as his first wife. (See section on John Inman, Sarah's grandfather.) The Moores lived beside the sprawling Inman compound along Dry Creek in northwest Giles Co., TN.

Sarah and Elkanah were prolific parents, with at least nine children. Born in Giles Co. were: James L. (1838), Joseph (1840), Isaac Porter (1841), John Wesley (1842), Andrew Jackson (1844), Martha Jane (1847), and Finley Glover (1849). After they moved to Christian Co., MO, David Moore/Marion (1853) and Sarah Ann (1856) joined the family; Elkanah and wife Sarah moved to Missouri in late 1852 while she was pregnant with David.

Elkanah (pronounced el-káy-nee) also was called Elkah (El-kee) or Caney, and he frequently used E. D. in legal documents. A tobacco farmer, Elkah originally operated as a squatter or a renter in Porter Township, Christian (then Greene) Co. He was assessed taxes for no land in 1856 when he was ranging two horses and five cows in Porter Township. No Greene Co. or federal land office records indicate Elkanah bought land through 1858.(20) In 1856, according to the affidavit of his physician, Dr. James Jones, Elkanah fell ill with consumption and was unable to do manual labor or otherwise work the rest of his life. The job of running the farm appears to have fallen to his teenage sons under Elkanah's supervision.

By 1860, The agriculture census shows that Elkanah's family was working a small acreage - 35, probably rented - with perhaps the greatest efficiency in the country; he sold 1,700 pounds of tobacco the year before and ranked among the 10 most prolific planters in the county. Of his 35 acres, all were "improved," he also ran six horses, four milk cows, two other cattle, two oxen, 10 sheep and 20 swine.

His tobacco crop may have been sold to the Ozark tobacco factory (21) or Springfield cigar makers. Records from 1860 show he had $4,600 in cash and personal property, including livestock - a small fortune in those days, which he probably reaped from cash sales of his tobacco crop, one of the few cash commodities grown in the area.

Living a mile from the Inmans southwest of Nixa were Francis P. and Nancy Ann Inman Wilson, Elkah's brother-in-law and sister, and his mother Martha, then 80. Sarah worked as a midwife "by profession" and attended the birth of each of Francis and Nancy Ann's four children.

Elkah was reported quite ill in August 1861, when his son John Wesley visited him during the Battle of Wilson's Creek. Pension affidavits indicate that Elkah and Sarah lived, at least in part, on $157 from son Isaac Porter's military pay from September 1862 to 1863. In February 1864, after Francis P. died at DuVall's Bluff, AR, Elkah signed as a witness when Nancy Ann applied for a widow's pension. He provided the probate bond when James H. Wilson, his brother-in-law and his son's father-in-law, died before September 1865.

The affidavit of Mary Wilson (Mrs. James L.) Inman and her sister Margaret B. Wilson says Elkanah died on July 7, 1866; he was about 51.

Sarah quickly began the process to qualify for a widowed mother's pension, based on the 1863 was death of son Isaac Porter. On Aug. 2, 1866, she signed with her mark on the pension application before Greene Co. Circuit Clerk R. A. C. Mack, an in-law of the local Edwards family. Witnessing were Edwards in-law John T. Nokes and James J. Faught of the soon-to-be Nixa area. According to the application, Sarah lived "on the way on road leading from Springfield, MO to Mt. Vernon, MO about six miles from the county seat (Ozark) of Christian Co., MO."

In November 1867, Sarah began receiving a Civil War pension of $8 a month, a major sum in the cash-less economy of Christian Co.

The pension records and lack of land deeds and probate files strongly suggests that Elkanah never owned land outright in Christian Co. during his lifetime - in line with the family's longtime pattern of congregate living and joint land ownership. In 1866 and 1867 affidavits, Sarah was described as "entirely destitute."

With her pension income, Sarah bought property, after he died, on Jan. 21, 1869 from A. P. Hemphill just north of the James River near modern Highway M.

Sarah in 1870 owned the farm with her two youngest children, David, then 17, and Ann, 14, in the home; son Andrew Jackson Inman was living with his wife Mary in another house on the property or on the next farm. The previous year, she had 20 of her 45 acres in cultivation with the land valued at $800. She had a lone milk cow and raised about $100 in crops.(22)

In 1872, Sarah's property included 55 acres (40 acres - NE of NW , Section 22, Township 27, Range 22; 15 acres - Section 15, Township 27, Range 22).

By 1876, also living with Sarah, Andrew and wife Mary were son David M., wife Cintha (Charles) and their son, Joel Elkanah; David took over operation of the farm.

Sarah is last shown owning personal property - one cow - on the 1881 tax list and more on previous rolls, but disappears in 1882 and following years. County records in 1883 disclose she was still receiving pension payments, but no further local records document her life.

Her sons John Wesley and David moved their families to Texas about 1884 to 1886 before returning, but Sarah's whereabouts during this period is unknown. Then age 64, she may have remained behind with son Jack and his wife Mary.

Sarah lived at least until May 4, 1894, when her last pension check was processed for $12 that month. She officially was dropped from the federal pension rolls.

The burial sites for her and Elkah are unknown, but they likely lie in a family plot on the original home place. A family burying ground did exist on their son John Wesley's farm, although relatives only remember infants interred there.

The 55-acre tract that belonged to Sarah Inman had passed to A. or H. Baker by 1912. It lies slightly southwest of Nixa, almost within the current city limits. A descendant of Elkanah and Sarah, Gina McConnell, and husband Tony Beeson, own a home near or on the property today.

Children of Elkanah D. and Sarah Moore Inman

James L. Inman (1838 - 1864/5)

James L. married Mary Nancy Wilson on Jan. 26, 1860 before Justice of the Peace G. F. Howard in Christian Co. Mary was one of four daughters of James H. and Sarah Hawthorn Wilson, formerly of Giles Co., TN, three of whom married sons of Elkanah and Sarah Moore Inman.

By 1860, James L. Inman owned or rented 80 unimproved acres, worth $400, in Porter Township; he had "improved" only three acres of the farm, where he likely was grazing livestock for both himself and his father.

James L. - believed to be Layfayette or Layfatte - and Mary had one child: Porter M(oore) F(inley) W(ilson), born on April 23, 1863, according to the little-used Christian County birth register.

In February 1864, James L. joined his father, mother and wife in signing affidavits on behalf of the widow's Civil War pension for Nancy Ann Inman (Mrs. Francis P.) Wilson, his aunt. James L. apparently died in late 1864 or early 1865.

The National Archives has failed to answer inquiries with any documents on James L.'s military career, and the Missouri State Archives have yielded no information.

In March 1867, on mother Sarah's pension application, wife Mary Wilson Inman was still using the Inman name but later that year she switched in those papers to her maiden name, Wilson, which suggests a divorce; James L. may have died or, more likely, moved to Arkansas. By 1868, the land had passed into his wife's name; Mary paid taxes on 80 acres in Section 27, Township 27 that eventually became the John Wesley Inman family compound. No earlier tax records are available.

Mary remarried to James G. Puryear, a member of a family that had intermarried with the Inmans in Giles Co., TN, on Nov. 8, 1868 before Elder R. S. Holderby in Christian Co. She and Puryear had at least one child, Sarah, born July 1869. Living with them the next year were young Porter and Mary's uncle, Joel Wilson, a retarded farm worker.

During the 1880s, this family disappeared from Christian Co. and probably moved to TX in 1884 with James' brothers John Wesley and Joseph Porter.

Porter Moore Inman is shown in the 1900 census in Hays Co., TX with wife Della (July 1872, MS) and children James C. (June 1895), Luther (August 1896) and Alta V. (August 1898), all born in Texas.

Joseph (1840 - after 1880)

Elkah and Sarah's son was listed overlooked in the 1850 census, but shown as Joshua P. in the 1860 head count. He seems to disappear mysteriously - because his name actually was Joseph Inman, unlike Joshua, which had no precedents in the family.

Joseph married Sarah Catherine Wilson, the daughter of James H. and Sarah Hawthorn Wilson, on March 5, 1871 before Justice of the Peace Levi C. Faught, and the couple settled onto a Porter Township farm. After her father died in 1865, young Sarah Catherine Wilson had moved in with her aunt, Nancy Ann Inman Wilson, until the marriage six years later. But Sarah Catherine also had inherited a Wilson family farm, which was located in extreme southern Porter Township near the James River.

Joseph and Sarah had at least three children: daughter R. L., John W. (1873) and son C. E. (1879). Joseph was still living in Porter Township through the early 1880s, but the family may have moved to TX in 1884.

Brother John Wesley and his family moved to TX then, but returned the following year. No signs of Joseph are found thereafter; he and his family were not living in Texas in 1900.

Isaac Porter (1841 - Sept. 5, 1863)

(Isaac Porter died from diarrhea in a Bloomfield, MO federal army hospital serving in Co. D, 8th MO Cavalry since September 1862. His death, followed by Elkanah's, qualified Sarah for a mother's pension. This section has yet to be written. Isaac Porter never married and left no heirs.)

(In the Civil War, Isaac P. served in the Christian Co. Home Guard in 1861 and was mustered in July 28, 1862 as a corporal in Co. A, 72nd Regiment, Enrolled MO Militia with Capt. Jackson Ball of Nixa. He was apparently the Co. D, 8th MO Cavalry Volunteers, which is shown on a separate service card.)

John Wesley and Lavanda Wilson Inman

Civil War veteran John Wesley Inman (Oct. 11, 1842 - March 7, 1927) was born - probably near Campbellsville, TN in Giles Co. - to Elkanah D. and Sarah Moore Inman, and the youngster was attending school in 1850 with his brothers Porter and Andrew.

Whether the school helped, however, is questionable because many relatives could not read and write, according to census records. Gov. - and later -President Andrew Johnson told the Tennessee Legislature in 1853 that "our common schools are doing little or no good." The state had attempted to fund schools through the sale or rental of township lands, a scheme that worked well in the North, but failed in Tennessee. The state's public schools didn't truly function until 1854, when Tennessee began levying a tax for education and the Inmans already had moved to Missouri.

Elkanah's children consequently had a poor educational foundation when they arrived here, and Missouri schools were far less advanced than those in Tennessee.

Census reports indicate John W. could read and write, but in his federal pension applications he often signed with a mark. This practice may have stemmed from his ill health, which persisted for at least the last 25 years of his life. When he did appear to sign, he had a tolerably flowing script.

John W. had emigrated to Missouri with his parents by late 1852; his brother David was born in Christian Co. the next May. In federal papers, Irvin W. Edwards said he had known John W. since 1853 - likely the spring when the family made its first impact on Porter Township, Missouri. John W. attended school when he arrived because George W. Nokes, son of Nelson Nokes, said he had known John W. since 1854 and they had been "school boys" together.

The Civil War years

The Civil War sorely divided the Inman cousins in Missouri, and at least a half dozen joined the Confederate lines against their Union relatives in the volatile war zone along the Missouri-Arkansas border.

John Wesley's war record is found by the process of elimination because at least four John Inmans were involved in the Civil War from southwest Missouri; all apparently were related. John Wesley was not, for example, the John W. Inman from Stone County whose home was appropriated by rebel bushwhackers from 1864 to 1868 and who moved to Ozark to work as a merchant.

He was not the John Inman who was described as a "notorious bushwacker," captured in 1864 by Union Captain Thomas Thomas' forces and "instantly killed" south of Rolla when he and colleague Jacob Rustin attempt to run away from their captors. Neither was John Wesley the John W. Inman of the 46th Infantry Volunteers who died Feb. 12, 1865 in a Casswell, MO hospital. Nor did he hail from Inman Hollow, MO, a Howell or Dent County town full of Inman cousins, where an 1862 battle or skirmish took place between Union and rebel forces.

But John Wesley like his brothers sided with the Union, saw extensive action in the war, and earned a pension that was a principal source of income in his later years.

State records do not indicate that he served in the Christian Co. Home Guard in 1861 as did most of his neighbors or in other units - but considering the tenor of the times and the accuracy of the state records, it is highly unlikely that he was not enrolled in a federal unit. A daughter-in-law, in a 1971 interview, told this story of John Wesley's activities in August 1861, as he related them to the family.(23)

John Wesley was assigned to drive a grub wagon for Union forces coming down from Rolla to Springfield on the eve of the battle. His father Elkanah had been in extremely poor health,(24) and John Wesley received permission to visit him. The next morning, he heard sounds of the battle and apparently turned in that direction on the Old Mt. Vernon Road and took the Old Wire Road north. He told the family about terrible carnage - halves of bodies lying on opposite sides of the fence - in Sharp's cornfield and the dead laid out for burial. John Wesley then drove his wagon back to the Public Square where his unit was bivouacked.

He enrolled Aug. 20, 1862 in Company A of the 72nd Regiment and served until Feb. 1, 1863. On April 1 he entered Company H of the 6th Regiment of the Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia at Ozark and re-upped on Sept. 14, 1863 in Company L of the same regiment; during roll call on Oct. 31, 1863 he was "absent with leave." His service ended in that stint on March 15, 1864 when he was "relieved" at Yellville, AR, but he again was drafted to serve from Aug. 20 to Nov. 14, 1864. Federal authorities only recognized his service to the country from September 1863 to March 1864 in his pension application.

The 6th Provisional Militia was considered regular army and earned John Wesley the pension that supported him, his wife and apparently some of his children's families in later years.

John Wesley enrolled in the 15th Regiment of the state militia after the war to help keep general order. His records show he was 5-feet-6 with auburn hair, blue eyes and a fair complexion. But his pension records offer a far different picture: John W. Inman was 6-foot-3 with sandy hair, a towering man brought low by disability in middle and later years.

Nancy Lavanda Wilson

John Wesley married Nancy Lavanda Wilson on Feb. 9, 1865 before Justice of the Peace E. L. Elam, who lived in southern Porter Township near the Inmans and McCaffertys. Records of the marriage were burned in the Christian County courthouse fire of 1865, which was set by an arsonist trying to destroy his criminal records and evidence. The Inmans didn't re-register their marriage, unlike others in the county. But in 1915, John W. and Lavanda still had the original marriage certificate, which has been lost.

Lavanda Wilson (Oct. 14, 1846 - March 5, 1929) was born in Giles Co., TN to James H. (1821 - 1865) and Sarah Emily Hawthorn (1821 - 1851) Wilson. (See separate section on Wilsons and Hawthorns.)

The John W. Inman compound

After the Civil War, John Wesley Inman set about establishing what eventually became a 200-acre compound in Porter Township, Christian Co., southwest of Nixa. The compound was reminiscent of the settlement occupied by the Inmans in Giles Co.

By 1876 he owned 85 acres: two 40-acre farms and a 5-acre home site (SE of SE of Section 21, Township 27, Range 22; NE of NE and part of NW of NE of section 23, Township 27, Range 22.) Part remained in his hands, but the lands in Section 23, almost inside the current city of Nixa, went to Birdie McDaniel and family by 1912.

In 1884, the family moved to Texas, probably with brother Joseph Porter and Sarah Catherine Wilson Inman, who disappear from the county at about this time. The stay lasted only about one year, according to John W.'s federal pension filings of 1915, but during the sojourn the family Bible was lost that contained his birth record. This information suggests that Joseph Porter, the older brother, simply may have kept the Bible, which may be in possession of his descendants.

Upon the family's return to Christian Co., personal property tax records show that John Wesley and Lavanda were running nine head of cattle, three sheep and 14 hogs on the place by June 1, 1892. By 1899 he had divested the land nearest Nixa. Instead he owned, besides his original home place of 80 acres, 40 acres of the land that touched his property on the northeast corner.

John Wesley appears to have swapped that 40 acres for another 40 adjacent to his property to the east within the next 10 years. He also bought the property of his three siblings, David, Ann and Jack, who were moving to Oklahoma.

In 1908, the holdings included three plots: one 80 acres (S of SE , Section 21, Township 27, Range 22), another 80 acres (S of NE , Section 21, Township 27, Range 22) and 40 acres (SW os SW os Section 22, Township 27, Range 22) - apparently the largest extent of John Wesley's landholdings.

The property contained a large spring, which fed a creek that joined another spring-fed stream on the property before the unnamed branch flowed into the nearby James River. Also traversing the property was Maupin Hollow, a valley named for one of the many early Christian county Maupin families, probably that of Daniel W. Maupin.

The compound eventually came to include three houses that sheltered John and his three sons' families, as well as occasional renters. As late as 1908, John W. was paying taxes for the entire compound himself, both for personal and real property out of his Civil War pension.

During the 1890s, John W. waged a battle to receive a federal veteran's pension. He began filing papers in support of his application under the 1890 pension law on Dec. 17, 1892, citing asthma, lumbago, rheumatism, diseases of the respiratory system, indigestion (ulcers) and "general disability" that were not due to "vicious habits." Attorney G. W. Logan of Ozark had agreed to represent him for $10 on the claim, and G. W. Nokes and Irvin Edwards, JP, of Nixa, and Thomas F. M. McCauley of Ozark assisted. McCauley and Logan said they had known John W. for 20 years.

On Jan. 17, 1894, the War Department's pension office appears to have undermined his request: Col. F. C. Ainsworth said he failed to find John W. Inman on the rolls of Co. L, 6th Provisional Enrolled Missouri Militia, which became Co. L of the 16th Missouri Cavalry; Ainsworth also said Co. A, 72nd Enrolled Missouri Militia had never been mustered into service of the U.S. (although it was drafted by the essentially military governor.)

But further papers and maneuverings must have turned the tide: John W. was receiving pension funds by 1898 when he was asked to fill out a questionnaire with his quarterly payment. In one of the 1896 filings, a friend "since boyhood," James J. Faught, the first Nixa postmaster who had similar afflictions himself, said he had "frequently been at the claimant's home, and he was unable to get from the bed to the fire without aid and, in my opinion, said diseases are not due to any vicious habits as the claimant is a man of good moral character and not addicted to any vicious habits."

These early pension papers show that Dr. G. P. S. "Shack" Brown had been the family physician since 1879 and, in particular, he attended John W. during a major attack of bronchitis and lumbago from December 1892 to May 1893. He rated John W.'s long-term disability at of his capacity for work.

In 1920, pension papers show John suffered from "chronic bronchitis, chronic heart disease and neuritis of partial paralysis involving both legs to the extent that he cannot walk without crutches or cain (sic)." By 1922, he is cited as having "heart trouble, apoplexy, almost deaf, totally unable to get about (without) attendant."

John Wesley and Lavanda survived into their 80s, although Lavanda, a heavy woman, could move little, either because of weight or arthritis. When John W. died, Lavanda applied for a widow's pension on March 14, 1927, assisted by neighbors E. B. "Pot" Gooch and wife Cora McConnell Gooch.

According to their death certificates, John Wesley died of chronic nephritis, a kidney disease marked by failure of the organ, and Lavanda was claimed by lobar pneumonia.

Both are interred at McConnell Cemetery. The "new" family Bible, acquired after the original was lost in Texas, reportedly has been passed down into the family of their grandson, William Jack Inman.

Children of John Wesley and Lavanda Wilson Inman

Sarah Jane Inman Love (August 1866 - Nov. 28, 1921)

Jane married Louis F. Love (January 1866 - Nov. 28, 1932), a farmer, on Oct. 12, 1890 before Justice of the Peace Henry Hubbard. Jane and Lou farmed 80 acres directly west of her mother and father's farm, although foreclosure notices appeared on the place in the Ozark newspapers in the late 1890s.

Among their other neighbors at the turn of the century was John Green McConnell, John W. McConnell's nephew. Green, who had a hot temper according to court records, began arguing with Lou one early March day in 1899 over livestock. The verbal salvoes ended when Green hurled a rock and fractured Lou's skull; he was expected to die. According to the Ozark newspaper, Green "skipped," but he was later apprehended and charged with felonious assault.

Lou may have provoked the altercation because he is recalled by his nephew as a "windjammer" who had set, nigh-unshakable opinions.

Jane and Lou, who later moved to Springfield. had three children: daughter Cora (November 1895), a nurse who moved to Oklahoma and never married; and two sons, Charles (1901) who married and also moved to Oklahoma; and Johnny (1905).

Jane and Lou lie in Greenlawn North Cemetery in Springfield.

Finley Glover "Bud" Inman (March 6, 1869 - Oct. 2, 1914)

(separate section)

Mary Martha F. (Frances) Inman (Dec. 11, 1871 - Sept. 8, 1872)

This daughter, who was buried in the compound on the farm later owned by Robert Inman, is revealed only in the pension papers of John W. Inman. She was named for Mary (wife of Joel Wilson), Martha (Inman, wife of Elkanah) and apparently Frances (Chapman, wife of uncle Joseph Inman in Giles Co.).

John Grandison Inman (October 29, 1873 - 1932)

John apparently was named for Lavanda's Wilson uncle, Grandison, who married Susan M. Dickey on June 11, 1852 in Giles Co., TN. John married Cora Frazier (Sept. 12, 1882 - Aug. 11, 1962) and lived in a two-room house on the family property - which they quickly populated.

Cora was born in Arkansas, as was her first son, to parents born in Georgia. According to his late nephew Robert Inman, John met Cora when he fled south of the Boston Mountains in the late 1890s to avoid testifying in a murder case that involved a relative or neighbor. (The relative possibly was Joseph Walker Inman, a distant cousin in Logan Co., AR.)

Although the marriage license apparently was issued in Arkansas and hasn't been found, the couple was married in 1898, according to census reports. John operated the molasses mill on the family compound, where neighbors and relatives took their cane for processing.

John, curiously, was listed in the 1880 census as "insane," perhaps epileptic, but he appears to have recovered; he is remembered, however, as a considerable drinker. He and Cora lie in McConnell Cemetery.

Among the children, other than an infant who was buried in the family plot that has since disappeared:

Edgar (Oct. 21, 1899 - feb. 22, 1983) in May 1919 married Marie McConnell (July 13, 1903 - Nov. 28, 1938), the daughter of Harvey and Maud Brown McConnell. Edgar and Marie had four children: Ila (1924 - 1985) who married Carl Widders, Okla (1922 - 1933), Avadean Inman Cole (1934 - 1951), Glen Edgar (Nov. 20, 1931) and Nolan. In a tragic set of events, Cole and her 2-month-old niece, Carlyla Widders, were killed in the same 1951 auto accident in Stockton, Kansas. Cole was driving the Widders family as passengers. Curiously, no spouse is listed for the 16-year-old Cole in her obituary.

- Glen Edgar married Jackie Prugger, and they had two children, Allen and Glenda.

- Nolan married Lena Nokes after her first marriage to Hugo Hedgpeth. After Lena's death, Nolan remarried to Marcelle Bolin, a McConnell cousin through the Edwards family.

Annie (June 26, 1901 - May 17, 1978) married Homer Nokes, the brother of Lena Nokes. Annie and Homer are buried at Payne Cemetery. Homer and Lena were among the hundreds of descendants, including the McConnells, of the Kenamore sisters who settled in Christian County in 1852 and 1854. Homer and Lena were children of W. J. "Bunk" and Lillie Mayabb Nokes, grandchildren of J. T. Nokes and Nancy Edwards and the great-nephew and great-niece of Matilda Edwards McConnell.

Lloyd (Jan. 25, 1903 - April 26, 1950) married Ollie Aven, who after his death married Harvey Ginger (April 20, 1901 - April 21, 1971) in 1951. Ollie has her name engraved on each man's monument at McConnell Cemetery. Lloyd and Ollie had no children.

Lydia (Nov. 7, 1904 - Feb. 25, 1980) married Hobart McConnell (Feb. 16, 1898 - Jan. 19, 1979), the son of Jim Wright McConnell, on July 5, 1924. The couple had four children: Tommy, a Nixa rancher who married Dorothy Ford; a former Christian County treasurer who married Peggy Shumate; Sue who married Wesley Harp; and Roy (Feb. 8, 1927 - Oct. 24, 1932).

Lavanda (Feb. 11, 1907 - Jan.1, 1985) married Emery Pope (Feb. 3, 1903 - Feb. 25, 1980), another Kenamore descendant. Emery was a builder and farmer. The couple had one son, Leo, and they are buried at McConnell Cemetery. Leo married Dorothy Martin, and they have two children: Carla and Markel.

Earl (March 5, 1909 - Sept. 18, 1976) married Helen Stamper (Dec. 12, 1913), the daughter of Charles and Nettie Young Stamper, who lives in Nixa. The couple adopted a daughter.

Kenneth (July 7, 1912 - Dec. 19, 1978), who is buried in McConnell Cemetery, married Norma Painter (Feb. 17, 1912). Kenneth worked as a carpenter and a realtor. He and Norma had two children: Wilma (Cox); and Ronnie.

Peter Inman (March 16, 1877 - Jan. 1, 1878)

Peter is another infant buried on the Robert Inman Farm. The rails around the graveyard have fallen, and the original cedar trees no longer exist.

James L. Inman (March 8, 1883 - 1944)

Uncle Jim was named, almost certainly, for James L. Inman, his uncle who was killed or died during the post-Civil War years.

Jim married Martha Jane Sparkman of Nixa (Oct. 6, 1883 - April 22, 1980), known simply as Janie, on Nov. 11, 1900 before JP H. S. Evans.

Jane was the daughter of James A. Sparkman (February 1855 - 1938), whose family came to Greene Co. by 1851, and his first wife, Ophelia Virginia Pruett. Virginia, the daughter of J. A. and Martha Pruett from KY, was born and raised on the edge of Wilson's Creek battlefield.

Jane grew up southwest of Nixa and attended Recital School; she then worked in a Nixa canning factory until Virginia became incapacitated with tuberculosis and the family needed her help.

Jim and Jane eventually lived with John Wesley Inman in the four-room main house, and family members whispered that Jim was motivated economically by his father's veterans pension from the Civil War. John W.'s pension records, however, show that he was unable to move without crutches or canes after 1892, and he may have needed almost constant assistance during the last 25 years of his life. Lavanda, because of her weight, was of little help.

Jane, in the 1971 interview, told a different story: Jim built a house on land provided by his father next to his brother Will and neighbors John Dixon and Earnest Herndon. The family lived there for 28 years, and all nine of the children were born there, she said.

Among Jim's money-making schemes was a sweet potato cellar. Sweet potatoes, unlike other vegetables, keep best in a warm, rather than cool, dark place. Jim built a special cellar with a stove where local farmers could pay to store their yams; Jim, like his brothers, raised yams and stored them in the cellar to sell in the winter for coffee money - then 15 cents for a five-pound can.

Both Jim and Janie are interred in McConnell Cemetery. To them were born:

Mary (Sept. 20, 1903 - May 17, 1944) married Alva Young (d. 1940) on May 7, 1922. they are buried in Delaware Cemetery in Christian county. They had one daughter, "Midgie."

James Homer, known as Jimmy, (July 1, 1905 - Aug. 22, 1988) married Laura Mae Norman (May 1, 1909) on Dec. 24, 1934. The couple had five children: Phynis Eugene, Shirley Dean, Glen Edward (May 10, 1939), James Wilbur and Darvin Dee.

- Eugene (Oct. 13, 1935) married Reah Thomas and fathered Kimberlea Norene (Nov. 28, 1963) and Teresa Elaine (May 17, 1969). Kimberlea married Ernest Gray in 1987.

- Shirley (Aug. 1, 1939) Married Wayne Edward Davis, and the couple had sons David (Sept. 7, 1956) and Allen Dean (Aug. 14, 1960); David Wayne married Martha Leagh Harvin (Aug. 22, 1953) in 1983, and they have two daughters, Lindsey Anne, (March 21, 1981) and Jennifer Leagh Conroy Davis (April 19, 1977).

- James Wilbur (Nov. 4, 1941) married Willadean Davis in 1965, and they had two children, Tony Lee (Feb. 7, 1968) and Tammy Lynn, who died at birth on Oct. 16, 1975.

- Darvin (April 4, 1944) married Donna Elaine Wilke (July 7, 1948) and had two children - Dianna Dee (March 31, 1971) and Douglas Eric (Jan. 29, 1975).

- Jimmy Inman is buried in Brookline Cemetery.

Florence E. (June 5, 1907) married Harvey Jones and helped raise her cousin Grace Inman McConnell's son, Clyde. Florence and Harvey eventually divorced; he was killed afterward in a pickup accident involving their son, Roger Lee. Florence then remarried to Earnie Miackle, and they had a son, Jerry Michel (March 16, 1949 - June 8, 1958), who died from a gunshot wound to the head as he slept; after killing his son, Earnie hung and shot himself. Florence then remarried to Al Vandecourt.

Porter Isaac (Nov. 16, 1909 - Feb. 6, 1983) married Opal Mae Bolin (Dec. 12, 1912 - Feb. 20, 1976) on June 12, 1976) on June 12, 1937. Porter was a retired powder plant worker and member of Walnut Grove Baptist Church. The couple had three sons - Jerry Gene; Weldon and Eldon Dean - and six daughters: Edna Marie (Bolin), Mary Elizabeth; twins Rosa Mae and Donna Faye; Nettie Lou; and Martha Jean.

- Jerry Gene Inman (Feb. 4, 1940) married Sharon Julian and had a son, Jerry Gene, Jr. They divorced, and he remarried to Mary Procter (June 27, 1943) on April 19, 1974.

- Weldon (Aug. 12-13, 1943) and Eldon Dean Inman were twins. Dean married Joyce Hamilton and they had two sons: Chad Stuart (Jan.2, 1956) married Cathy Reynolds and had two children, Caleb Bryant and Jordan Collet; and Bryan Dean (Feb. 11, 1968) married Carla Noyes, and they have two children, Joshua Dean and Allison. Dean divorced Joyce and remarried to Christine Ann Iglodi (June 8, 1953) on Dec. 30, 1972.

- Edna Marie Bolin (April 26, 1932) married Norman Gene Thompson (Feb. 23, 1929 - Nov. 17, 1987) and had two children, Jean Marie and Curtis Lee. Jean Marie (Feb. 28, 1951) married 1. Stephen James Abner in 1970, with whom she had a son, James Clinton (April 13, 1971) and 2. Marvin Merle Gilley (May 21, 1947), who fathered three children, Melissa Ann (Oct. 16, 1977), Delia Jean (Aug. 8, 1980) Marvin Gene (Feb. 25, 1983).Curtis Lee (June 17, 1956) married Sharol Cater in 1975, and they have three daughters, Twila Diane (Oct 17, 1976), Jennifer Lee (Jan. 19, 1982) and Casie Joana (July 7, 1983).

- Mary Elizabeth Inman (may 27, 1938) married Rodney Duane Simmons (Jan. 21, 1937) and, before they divorced, had four children. Michael Duane Simmons (Sept. 16, 1957) married Karen Kaye Grenuke and had three children: Joshua Duane (March 11, 1986); Jennifer Kaye, (Nov. 16, 1987); and Jacob Phillip (June 12, 1990). Mark Douglas Simmons (Sept. 14, 1961) married Brenda Marie Grenuke, Karen Kaye's sister, and they have two children, Scott Marken (June 29, 1983) and Sara Kimberly (Feb. 10, 1985). Martin David Simmons (Sept. 14, 1961) married Michele Loran Ziert, and they have two children: Johnathan David (Aug. 2, 1990) and Kelsey Elizabeth (April 9, 1991). Michelle Diane Simmons (March 5, 1968) married Andrans Ishmael Lopez Garcia, and they have a daughter, Jessica Michelle (April 24, 1991).

- Rosa Mae Inman (Feb. 10, 1942) married 1. James Warren Vaughn (Aug. 17, 1939), 2. Terry Lee Cochran, 3. Paul Barton Smallwood and 4. James Allen Hightower in 1988. Rosa and James Vaughn, before they divorced had two children: Donna Diane (Jan.6, 1964) married John Fares and had two daughters, Jessica Louise (Nov. 23, 1985) and Jennifer Lynn (Nov. 29, 1988); and James Christopher Vaughn.

- Donna Faye Inman (Feb. 10, 1942), Rosa's twin, married Burton Eugene Fellows, and they had three children: Burton Eugene Fellows, Jr. (May 14, 1963) married Elizabeth Ann Adams and had two children, Brian Scott (May 6, 1988) and Brittany Elizabeth (Feb. 21, 1992); Brenda Kay Fellows (Aug. 7, 1964); and Teresa Diane Fellows (May 12, 1969). Donna and Eugene Fellows divorced, and she remarried to Joseph Noel Rowley (Nov. 7, 1945) in 1979.

- Nettie Lou Inman (Sept. 16, 1945) married Raymond Howard Compton, who died in an auto accident on March 5, 1966. Nettie remarried in 1972 to Lynn R. Hubbard, whom she divorced, and Nettie took the Inman name again. Nettie and Howard had two children: Tina Sue Compton (March 18, 1963) had a child, Megan Lauren Pickett and married Kiavosh Mazarei, who fathered Samad Daniel (Dec. 30, 1982) and Cheyenne Sahara (Sept. 5, 1984); Danny Ray Compton (June 19, 1964) married Wendy Turbun (Sept. 17, 1983) and had three children, Raymond Charles (April 30, 1984), Tabbatha Bailey (Sept. 12, 1986) and Steven Laurence (March 18, 1993). Nettie and Lynn Hubbard had a son, Scott Allen (July 18, 1973), who married Amber Boyman, and they have two children: Jacob Tyler (Jan. 26, 1989) and Brittany Christina (July 22, 1992).

- Martha Jean Inman (Dec. 23, 1948) married Larry Kent Martin (March 13, 1946) and had three daughters: Dawn Raneé (Feb. 19, 1970), Lesley K. (July 30, 1971) and Kristina Lynn (April 29, 1977).

Dorae Rachel (Feb. 4, 1911 - Sept. 8, 1911) is buried in McConnell Cemetery. Jane said in 1971 that the baby died of pneumonia.

Louis Carl (Aug. 11, 1913) married Ava L. Bolin (April 13, 1917), younger sister of his sister-in-law Opal Marie, on July 6, 1935. They had five children: James Dolphus or J. D. (April 9, 1936); Wanda (April 19, 1938); Larry Dean (Feb. 12, 1941); Rickey Allen (Sept. 15, 1948); and Carl Ronald (Nov. 10, 1946 - Nov. 12, 1946), who is buried in McConnell Cemetery.

William Jack (Nov. 3, 1915) lives in Springfield where he operated a roofing business with his late wife, Mayme Ruth O'Neal (Nov. 7, 1919 - Oct. 18, 1981). The couple had three children: Jack Lee (who with wife Joan has sons Randy and Rod); Jody (who with wife Karen has children Dave and Kim); and Jay Newton (who with wife Glenda) has children Andy, Amy (St. John) and Jason. A son now operates the company. Jack is attempting to regain control of the John Wesley Inman land deeded to Union Chapel church; the property was supposed to revert to the family when it was no longer used by the church. So far, he has cleared the brush from the one-acre tract and erected a chain-link fence around the property.

Seth Eldon (Oct. 8, 1918 - June 19, 1984) died at the then-State Chest Hospital in Mt. Vernon. He married Elsie E. Cannady Oct. 4, 1946, and she also has died. The had three sons and a daughter: Susan; Jimmy; Ronald; and Mike.

Jewell Alvance (April 3, 1922) married James Floyd Cannady (Oct. 6, 1916 - May 16, 1957), a Springfield fireman was electrocuted while working off-duty under a neighbor's house. The couple had two sons, Danny Floyd and Bobby Gene.

- Danny Floyd Cannady (Sept. 10, 1947) married Anita Hudson (Feb. 5, 1946) and they have two children: Dana Lynn (Oct. 2, 1968) and Christina Ann (Nov. 27, 1973). Bobby Gene (March 30, 1951) married Jackie Natho (May 9, 1958).

William Daniel (March 10, 1980 - Aug. 4, 1939)

Will, the youngest, appears to have been named for his mother's cousin, who was in the prison at the time for the murder of John Wesley's brother-in-law; any hard feelings must have withered with time. William Daniel appears to have been an old Wilson family name, perhaps dating from William, son of Adam, who moved to Hickman Co., TN circa 1806.

Will, a carpenter, married Artie McConnell, the daughter of Jim Wright and Fannie McCafferty McConnell, on Dec. 5, 1909. Will and Artie first lived with his father and mother. But the couple later moved into a four-room house on the family farm.

The Inmans eventually moved to Springfield. Will's late nephew, Robert Inman, remembers him as "a fine fellow - until him and his wife separated," although they continued living together. Will eventually moved to Joplin, where he died. Like his brothers and their wives, Will and Artie are buried at McConnell Cemetery.

Will and Artie had three children: Raymond (Sept. 15, 1910 - Dec. 12, 1913); Lowell, who is living in Nixa; and Mabel who married Carmen McConnell, a distant relation of Artie's, and lives with him today in Nixa.

- Mabel and Carmen had three daughters, including Linda Merrill and Connie Sue. Linda Merrill McConnell (Nov. 21, 1944) married a distant cousin, Larry June Noe (Nov. 17, 1944), a McConnell descendent, on May 1, 1964. They have two children: Jennifer Lynn (May 13, 1974) and Brian McConnell Noe (Aug. 6, 1978). Connie married Edward Lee Jones (Jan. 19, 1946). Connie teaches in the Ozark elementary school, and she and Ed have a dairy farm near Boaz, Christian Co., MO.

Andrew Jackson (1844 - after 1920)

Jack was married to Mary Estes, born in 1845 in AR, before Joseph W. Faught, justice of the peace, on Jan. 31, 1864. Jack served in Company G of the 24th Infantry Volunteers and Company I of the 21st Infantry Volunteers for the Union.

Any wealth Jack had seems to have centered on his personality; he is remembered as an endearing charmer. Jack worked as a tenant farmer, living for decades close to his mother Sarah. He also was remembered in the stories about the murder of his brother-in-law Daniel Stephenson; Jack was tried for first-degree murder, but acquitted by a Christian Co. jury. (See Stephenson section.)

In the late 1890s or early 1900s, Jack, sister Ann Stephenson, brother David and their spouses moved in a wagon train to Oklahoma and signed over their land to John Wesley. But Jack moved back and forth between the two states. Jack and Mary were living in Porter Township near the John W. Inman family compound after 1910 and earlier resided in a home near McConnell Cemetery, according to Mae Inman McConnell; one of these homes burned.

Jack and Mary had no children.

Their dates of death are unknown; Mary had died before 1920 when Jack was living with brother John and Lavanda Inman in Porter Township, Christian Co. Jack is said to have died at the home of his nephew, Joel Elkanah Inman, David's son, in Nowata, OK.

Martha Jane (1847)

Martha Jane appears in the 1860 Christian Co. census, but not thereafter.

She may have married in the Civil War, during which the records are lost because of arson at the courthouse. The Mormon records show a Martha Inman married Aaron Flood in Stone or Christian Cos., MO on Dec. 20, 1878.

Finley Glover (Oct. 22, 1848 (25) - Oct. 4, 1922)

Finley Glover was named for an uncle, the first husband of Eliza Louisa Inman Glover Wood Wilson Sanders, who died as a young man in 1847 in Tennessee. Finley Glover enrolled in the Missouri State Militia in 1866, and his records show he was only five feet tall with dark hair, blue eyes and fair complexion at age 18.

He went by "Glover" and married first to the older Mary Frances Carden (1843 - March 4, 1876), the daughter of Thomas Jefferson (1804 - 1871) and Elizabeth Warren Coker (1821 - March 28, 1887) Carden. Mary Frances had been born in Boone County, AR to a father born in Georgia and a mother from North Carolina. The Cardens, however, had moved to AR from Giles Co. A Wilson-Inman-Carden family researcher, Alice Faye Brown, has been unable to determine whether Glover and Mary Frances married in Arkansas, Missouri or California.

The Carden family emigrated to California in the fall of 1869, and Glover left behind his Inman family to move with his bride. In California, the Carden-Inman families settled in first Tulare and then Kern County, mountain country where farming and mining held sway.

Glover and Mary Frances moved into a home next to her parents in Visalia Township, Tulare Co. where he farmed (and registered to vote), and the young people soon had a daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Inman, born on August 1871. Researcher Brown concludes that Glover neither bought land nor homesteaded. By 1876, Glover and his family had moved to Kern County where Mary Frances died at age 32; she is buried in Weldon Cemetery.

Glover by 1880 had moved in with his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Carden, in Kern County - a motley pioneer household that also included Elizabeth's son and daughter, two grandchildren, another child, Elizabeth's mother Frances Coker and an Indian, who worked as a laborer on the farm. But little Sarah Elizabeth Inman was boarding with a Nailor family in 1880.

Glover returned to Missouri that fall and married Mary Louisa Wilson (March 20, 1858 - July 28, 1921) on Feb. 6, 1881 before Justice of the Peace G. W. Nokes. Mary L., called "Lousy," was the daughter of Francis P. and Nancy Ann Inman Wilson; Louisa and Glover were first cousins. Glover and Louisa had three children: May (April 1884), Walter (September 1890) and a third child who did not survive infancy.

Around 1907, Glover and Louisa followed their children to Craig Co., OK, where they moved in with May and her husband, Thomas Robison, a native of Illinois.

Glover and Mary Louisa attended the Church of Christ (Disciples).

Mary Louisa died on July 28, 1921 from influenza at Covington, Garfield Co., OK.

Just days later, on Aug. 1, 1921, her husband was baptized and joined the Christian Church. Finley Glover Inman died at Covington Oct. 4, 1922 at his daughter's home after a 10-day illness from obstruction of the bowels, according to his death certificate. According to the local newspaper, his last words were: "I am ready to meet my Savior."(26)

Finley Glover's services were conducted in the home, and the International Order of Odd Fellows, a lodge where he belonged, conducted grave side services. He and Mary Louisa's graves share a rose-colored marble stone at Covington Community Cemetery.

Sarah Elizabeth Inman and William Daniel "Bill" Wilson

Finley Glover's daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Inman, married her double cousin, William Daniel "Bill" Wilson, on May 27, 1892 before Justice of the Peace M. R. Sellars in Nixa. (See following section on Bill Wilson under Daniel Stephenson section.)

Sarah Elizabeth, known as "Sis" or "Lizzie," appears to have stayed in California when her father returned to MO, based on a March 10, 1892 letter that the author, a maternal aunt, advised her "to burn up this letter," which is "plainer" than any other written before. The ending of the letter was destroyed, but the beginning passed down in the family.

The maternal aunt noted that another aunt, Helen Vandergraw (Mrs. William) Carden, "has tried to slur you every since you left, and that's not all she started to get away with (__) all the property that was her intentions."

The slurs undoubtedly concern Lizzie's pregnancy out of wedlock in California that led to her move to Missouri and reunion with her father's family. The letter is dated March 10, 1892; Lizzie's first daughter, Martha Anna Frances, was born April 1; and Lizzie married as an Inman - no indication of divorce or widowhood - to William Daniel Wilson in Nixa on May 29, 1892.

Lizzie and Bill seem to each have come to the union tainted in the community - she by a child out of wedlock, he by a murder conviction. The couple married just after Bill was released from prison for his second-degree murder conviction in the death of his uncle, Daniel Stephenson. The first personal record of Bill comes not in a document, but a photo, likely taken in 1881 when he went to California to help bring his cousin Finley Glover and young daughter Sarah Elizabeth back to MO. The portrait, taken in Los Angeles, shows a strikingly handsome man with piercing eyes.

The next family photo, taken in the 1890s, shows a grey ghost of a man after the trials and deprivation of life in the Missouri State Penitentiary.

Though signs point to at least family forgiveness and even support in the case, bill quickly tried to move the family to the Indian Territory, if only to escape what must have been deep-seated community animosities, especially among the neighbors such as the Stephenson's. He was looking for a fresh start.

In a rare letter preserved by descendants, he wrote his wife from Hunnewell, KS on Sept. 10, 1893 as he was preparing the "run" into the Cherokee "Strip" or "Outlet" that took place six days later. He wrote:

Hunne Well, Kansas
Sept. 10th 93
My Dear Darlin Wife
Once more I seat myself to drop you a few lines to let you know I am well and truly hope this will find you all well. I am now at Honey Well, Kansas spending Sunday and I wish I could spend it with my two babies. We camped 5 miles west of hear last night. Shugar this is the prettiest country I ever saw and I think a good one if I an lucky anough to get a house heare. I know I will (be) satisfide and I ... will be the ... will ... heare.
Hun I don't no just how I will make the race yet. I am very sorry I did not bring Lattie. If I had her heare I would feel sure of a hours (horse). If I hafta hier a horse it will cost me $10 or $15 dollars. We talke like running in our wagons at times. It is unsettled yet.
Dol (Doll), you can write two letters to me and address one to Arkansas City Kansas. This address is right and blotted the first, so you might not under stand it. Sugar, be sure to write to both (places) so I will be sure (to get the) letter from (you before) I start home. I don't no just which place I will be at. I want a letter from you next Friday (the day before the "run"). I will be at one or the other towns on that day.
All the boys is well and satisfide with ther (their) trip whether they get a home or not all but me. If I don't get a home I won't be satisfide staying a way so long from you.
Bud (27) ses for me to tell you if you see any of his folks for you to tell them to wright as I have ask you to wright. Darlin, I will close for this time hoping to see you soon. From your true (love?) and send a kis to (Mama and Lizz)ie and lots of (?) two babys. Tell Mama and aunt I want to see them. No more this time. W. D. Wilson
To his frustration, Bill returned to MO without a stake, and he may have tried again during later "runs" and lotteries when land was opened to white settlers in the Indian territory. Numerous young men and couples exited Christian Co. for Oklahoma during this period, although many returned.

By 1900, the Wilson family was living in Porter Township with Eliza Inman Glover Wilson Sanders or "Aunt Lizzie," an 86-year-old widow and sister of Elkanah Inman and Nancy Ann Inman Wilson. (See her section under James William Inman.)

Lizzie had an independent source of income, either from the estate of her third husband, William Sanders, or a pension based on the service of Sanders or, more likely, second husband James H. Wilson. In 1905, bill Wilson filed suit against her in Christian Co. Circuit Court.(28) On Sept. 21, 1905 the Ozark Tribune reported that the case had been arbitrated and the settlement confirmed; Bill and Sarah Elizabeth were awarded $385 and court costs. The suit apparently tapped Lizzie's funds for repayment of the room, board and other expenses that Bill incurred

Accounts of Lizzie's personality have not been passed down; she may have been a penny-pinching, demanding crone who provoked the suit after many years of generous support by Bill and the Wilson family. However, the suit - once of a common nature on the frontier, but no longer - contributes to the Jekyll-and-Hyde picture of Bill Wilson.

Although all the children were born in Missouri, as late as 1907, the family was living in Craig Co., OK by the 1910 census. Joining them was the 80-year-old mother, Nancy Ann. Aunt Lizzie, moved to Oklahoma, too, but rather than making her home with the Wilsons, she now lived with May Inman and Tom Robison and her grandnephew, Finley Glover and Mary Louisa Inman.

Will Wilson died Feb. 23, 1913 - the 49th anniversary of his father Francis P.'s death - southwest of Prague, OK in Pottawatomie Co. He is buried in the Garden Grove Cemetery across the road from Garden Grove Missionary Baptist Church, near Centerview, which the family attended. Nancy and Lizzie are buried, there , too.

After Will's death, by 1917, Sarah Elizabeth moved to Drumright in Creek Co., OK, where she ran a boarding house until her death on Dec. 14, 1920. Two of her children were still living at home, and they may have been taken in by Aunt Ann Inman Stephenson. Sarah Elizabeth lies in the Masonic Cemetery in Drumright.

The couple had nine children:

  1. Martha Anna Frances (April 1, 1892, Nixa - April 7, 1961, San Diego) married 1) Fred Cole in Pottawatomie Co., OK on March 16, 1913 and 2) James Monroe Cagle Dec. 16, 1920 in Drumright, Creek Co., OK. She is buried in Ft. Rose Cross, San Diego.
  2. Harvey Daniel (May 1895, Nixa - ?, CA) married 1) Lucy Brown on Dec. 23, 1916 in Tecumseh, Pottawatomie Co., OK and 2) Edith ?.
  3. Artelia "Artie" (Feb. 5, 1897, Nixa - March 7, 1950, Oklahoma City) married James Lester Sikes on Dec. 25, 1913 in Prague, Lincoln Co., OK. She is buried in Garden Grove Cemetery, Pottawatomie Co., OK.
  4. Lester "Les" Finley (July 24, 1902, Nixa - Oct. 2, 1957, Tulsa, OK) married Mamie Czrena Hardison. He is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery, Claremore, OK.
  5. Lillian Mae (July 24, 1903, Nixa - May 20, 1975, Bakersfield, CA) married 1) Jess Castello on April 15, 1917 in Sapulpa, Creek Co., OK and 2) Jess Thompson on Sept. 13, 1922 in Drumright. She is buried in Hillcrest Memorial, Bakersfield.
  6. Sylvia "Silvy" (Sept. 28, 1907, Big Cabin, OK - June 26, 1972, Stroud, OK) married Floyd James Brown on Dec. 12, 1927 in Holdenville, Hughes Co., OK. She is buried in Stroud Cemetery. Sylvia and Floyd had four children: Opal Fay (who died in infancy and is buried in Garden Grove Cemetery), Freda June, Carroll Gene and Billy Floyd. Billy married Alice Faye Weaver, a descendent of Missouri Weaver and Allee families from Moniteau Co., who has devoted hundreds of hours to the Inman-Wilson genealogy and family history.
  7. Roy Alva (Sept. 9, 1911, Big Cabin - June 17, 1975, Oklahoma City) married Ruth Evalina Seaton in Okemah, Okfuskee Co., OK on April 13, 1937. He is buried in Sunnylawn Cemetery, Oklahoma City.
  8. & 9.Two, names unrecorded, who died in infancy after 1900.

Children of Finley Glover and Mary Louisa Wilson Inman

May Inman (April 1884 - May 16, 1931) married Thomas Robison (1880 - 1955), a farmer from Illinois, after 1900. The couple moved to Oklahoma by 1906, and they had two daughters: Goldy (1906) and Ula Neoma (1908). By the 1920s, Robison was working in the oil fields as a rig builder. May died in Oklahoma City in 1931 from pellagra with complications from bronchitis and perhaps acute pneumonia. She is buried in Covington Community Cemetery next to her parents. Although he bought the three plots, Tom Robison moved to California, where he died and was buried in 1955.

Ula Neoma Robison married Glenn Perrin, who is also buried at the Covington Cemetery. Neoma lives in Tyler, TX.

- Walter (September 1890 - before 1917) apparently never married. He moved with his parents and sister to Oklahoma in the early 1900s. At age 19, Walter was living with his brother-in-law Tom Robison in Craig County. Walter died in Drumright, but his burial site is unknown.

David M(oore or Marion) (May 10, 1853 - Jan. 21, 1919)

David married Cintha (pronounced Cynthia) E. Charles (1858) on Jan. 4, 1875 in Boone Co., AR before JP Jesse L. Ragsdale. Cintha and her brother were orphans, born in Louisiana, and she married with the permission of her uncle, "who raised her, as an orphan," according to the marriage record in Boone Co.

David likely met Cintha on visits to see his Wilson relatives, who lived in Boone Co.; he and Cintha named their firstborn son Joel after David's great-uncle.

By the spring of 1880, he was running the family farm southwest of Nixa with Cintha and children Joel Elkanah, 4, William J., 3, and John G., five months. Living with them was David's mother Sarah at age 63; on either side were Aunt Nancy Inman Wilson and brother Jack Inman. No one in David's household could read or write, according to the census, although David had been attending school in 1870.

In 1884, David joined his brother John Wesley - along with brother Joseph, perhaps his mother and the Puryears in-laws - in moving to TX, where at least one son, Thomas Jefferson, was born. By late 1885 or 1886, David and Cintha had returned their family to MO, where another son was born.

Despite the interruption of the move, David appears to have been extraordinarily prosperous, if only because he took over the original family farm; he had extensive livestock holdings, compared to others in the area. Tax records in 1892 show he was raising three horses, 22 cows, 17 sheep and 15 hogs - a major expansion over his herds 10 years before.

Some of the livestock, however, may have been jointly held, in the Inmans' communal tradition, and simply reported and taxed against David.

In 1893, much of the Inman-Wilson family tried to move to Oklahoma, and David had succeeded by 1896 when his last son, Porter Moore, was born. The family settled on a farm in the southeast corner of Nowata Co., about 8 miles east of the town of Nowata near New Alluwe, OK and 60 miles southwest of Joplin, MO.

David and Cintha had 10 children:

  1. Joel Elkanah (1875 , MO - 1943, OK) married Lula Robertson. In 1910, Joel E. is shown in Rogers Co., OK, adjacent to Nowata on the south. He was married to "Edith" with four children: Nettie (1897), Phoebe (1898), James (1903) and Nora (1906), all born in OK. He is buried in Nowata.
  2. William "Willy" J. (1877, MO), who is said to have married, but is shown in 1910 as a single man with a brother and sister living in Craig Co., OK, adjacent to Nowata Co. on the east. This man may have been the son named "Jack" as in William Jackson; Jack died in California.
  3. John Grandison (1880, MO - 1942, OK) married Ella Hunt (1885) and is buried in Nowata Co. The couple was living there in 1910 with five children: Lewis E. (1899), Oscar (1901), Ernest (1904), Clarence (1906) and Lillie (1908). (These children have Maynard-Hunt family names from Christian Co., MO; Ella likely was a member of that large family.) John G. is buried in Nowata.
  4. James Layfatte (June 19, 1883 - March 6, 1955) married Ethel Evelyn Tatum. In 1910, they were living in Rogers Co., OK near brother Joel E. and with children Mary (1903), James (1905), Florence (1907) and Ira (1910).
  5. Thomas Jefferson (1885/6, TX) married Sophia and, by 1910, they were living in Craig Co., OK with son Roman K. (1910). Tom is buried in Chelsea, OK.
  6. Leslie, perhaps Leslie Jackson, known as "Jack" (1888, MO) perhaps Andrew Jackson, married Matt after 1910.
  7. Two daughters - Etta married James Harmon "Barker" Dildine, and she is buried in Nowata; Lula married Ora Tate, and she is buried in Nowata.
  8. One daughter was known as "Pearlie" (1884, MO) and lived with bothers Leslie and Willy in 1910 in Craig Co., OK.
  9. Porter Marion (1896, OK - 1955) married Florence Comfort after 1910 and is buried in Nowata.
  10. A dead infant.
David's decision to name his eldest son Joel Elkanah is a clue to the identity of Martha (Wilson) Inman, apparent sister of Joel Wilson Sr. and David's confirmed grandmother. If David was not related to Joel Wilson (b, 1785, NC), there are no previous Joels in David Inman's family and no reason to combine this name with his father;s for a firstborn son.

David died at age 65 at 5 p.m. Jan. 21, 1919 from "chronic lesioning of heart," according to Dr. J. R. Collins, his personal physician who signed the death certificate. His family knew virtually nothing about David's ancestry except that his father had been born on TN. He was buried in the "new addition" to the Nowata Cemetery under the direction of Karl H. Huddleston, undertaker, on the following day. Cintha was still alive at the time.

Cintha died on Sept. 18, 1931, and she, too, is buried in Nowata.

David's descendants now live in the area of Claremore and Vinita, OK.

Sarah Ann Inman Stephenson (Feb. 28, 1856 - Aug. 13, 1938)

Ann married Daniel Stephenson (1846 - October 1882) on Oct. 4, 1871 before JP Levi C. Faught. Daniel, named for his uncle, was the Missouri-born son of Matthew and Elizabeth Baker Stephenson, who both came from Tennessee on a wagon train in 1843. The younger Stephenson served in Calvary Co. C of the Missouri Militia, rising to the rank of captain.

He stood 5-feet-4 with auburn hair, dark eyes and fair complexion.

Ann and Daniel owned a 40-acre farm (SE , NE of Section 10, Township 27, Range 22) on Guin Prairie, in the area dominated by the Edwards, McConnell and Faught families, at least by 1875. The farm lay across the road from the 240-acre spread owned by Mary D. (Mrs. Alexander) McConnell and operated by her sons, John A. and George W., northeast of Nixa.

Daniel was buried in Stephenson Cemetery, just west of his property. In the mid-20th century, his was the only stone remaining there, although others had been in place at one time, including those for his parents

Ann Stephenson had three children by Daniel: Sarah Elizabeth or Lissie (December 1873); Martha F. (1876 or before) and Alice (February 1881).

Widow Ann Stephenson was living between Joe Frank and Harvey McConnell in 1900 with daughters Lissie "Crastletow," a 26-year-old widow, and Alice. According to that census, Ann and Lissie also were caring for a grandson, Calvin "Crastletoe" or Castlow (b. November 1892). Lissie had married Alan "Castilow" of Nixa on Dec. 3, 1891, according to their license, but they divorced. The husband's name had many variations, including Castoe, Casto, Costlow and Castletoe, and disappears from the county after 1900.

Alan, however, was the son of Jacob and Amanda McCafferty Castillo/Castoe; their son "Allie, single," was born March 1872, is shown in Jacob's home in 1900 after he remarried to Melvina Pope, daughter of Leroy and Amanda Pope and sister of Rebecca Jane Pope McConnell.

Alice died shortly on Nov. 18, 1900 while she was engaged to John Dixon, a neighbor, who promised her never to marry another - and he didn't, living his entire life as a bachelor across the road from the late Robert Inman's home.

Ann moved to Oklahoma after 1900 with Lissie and grandson Calvin. In October 1922, she was living in Sperry, just north of Tulsa.

She moved still further north by 1937, when she was living in Oglesby, Washington Co., OK and contracted senile dementia, probably what today is known as Alzheimer's disease; she also suffered for arteriosclerosis. On July 31, 1938, she sought medical help for uremia and died of the acute illness on Aug. 13. Ann likely was living with her grandson, Calvin Castlow (his spelling), then of Oglesby, the informant on her death certificate.

She is buried in the old Steele Camp Cemetery, now known as the Oglesby Cemetery.

The murder of Daniel Stephenson

In a neighborhood version of the story, Daniel Stephenson was unfaithful to his wife, and he paid the ultimate price for tainting Ann's honor.

Daniel, in an old Inman family story, had been out that evening with brother-in-law Jack Inman and Will Wilson. As Robert Inman told the story, the three men traveled to Springfield and drank heavily; on the way home, Will Wilson clubbed Stephenson to death with a wagon standard.

In another version, two men - one of them Will - tied Daniel to a team of horses on the old Harrison Keltner farm, immediately southeast of McConnell Cemetery, and after whipping them, let the horses drag Daniel through "new ground" full of tree stumps.

According to Springfield newspapers, Robert's version comes closest to the truth, although it is still flawed. Newspaper accounts of the day, of course, were based often on hearsay rather than official records and tended toward sensational aspects of the cases. Daniel Stephenson was murdered on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 21, 1882, and the Springfield Express on Oct. 27, 1882 carried this report:

Ozark, MO, Oct. 23, 1882 - A brutal murder was committed five miles northwest of here last Saturday (Oct. 21) evening.
Jack Inman and Bill Wilson returned from Springfield by way of the Faught school house, where a Greenback (political party) meeting was being held. They inquired for one Daniel Stevenson and asked him into their wagon. He consented, and this was the last seen of him as they drove away. His absence causing some uneasiness, a search was made Sunday morning. His coat was found first, then his hat and this led to discovery of his dead body in the brush. A family feud is at the bottom of the murder as Inman is the brother-in-law of Stevenson.
The murderers are at large, and a strong posse of citizens is now being organized here, and the county will be scoured for the fugitives. The excitement is intense, and popular indignation is greatly aroused. (Since the above was written, it has been learned that Wilson and Inman beat Stevenson to death with wooden clubs.)
On Nov.3, 1882, the Express reported that "the murderers of Dan Stevenson are still at large, notwithstanding the active measures (a posse) to effect their capture." A report on the apprehension of Inman and Wilson couldn't be located, but they may have been fugitives for months. Christian Co. fugitives - and even related witnesses - often fled to Arkansas, where the Inmans had relatives and in-laws. Robert Inman told a story about the case that involved flight to Arkansas.

According to court records, on March 5, 1883, James R. Vaughan was appointed special prosecutor to try charges of first-degree murder against Jack Inman and Wilson.

The actual trial coincided with a spate of local murders, including the change of venue to Christian County for John (Jack) Griffin who shot and killed John P. Conroy in a Springfield saloon on Feb. 28, 1883. Dominating the front pages was the bank robbery trial of Frank James in Gallatin, MO.

The Express, incensed about the local killings, editorialized about Inman, Wilson and Griffin: "Four red-handed murderers were taken from the county jail here last Monday morning (Aug. 27) to Ozark for trial in the Christian County Circuit Court. All these crimes were atrocious murders, and if the murderers escape the gallows, it will appear to the unbiased mind that capital punishment has but a small chance."

According to the Springfield Patriot, Vaughn was assisted by S. H. "Pony" Boyd and D. Payne; Boyd, a former congressman and ambassador to Siam (Thailand), was the second cousin of the late Walter McConnell of Nixa. The defense rested with Almus Harrington of Ozark, Capt. W. D. Hubbard, T. J. Gideon and J. M. Patterson, the latter two of longtime Christian County families.

Despite the newspapers' calls for capital punishment, Inman was found not guilty, but Wilson was pronounced guilty of second-degree murder in August 1883 in Christian Co. Circuit Court. He was sentenced to the Missouri State Penitentiary for 10 years. A full report on the murder trials in Christian County was reserved for Griffin, who was convicted, sentenced to 45 years and hauled to Jefferson City for imprisonment with Wilson.

A 23-year-old farmer at the time, the 5-foot-4, 145 pound Wilson entered the State Penitentiary on Sept. 10, 1883. Prison records show he had a 9 -inch foot, dark hair, blue eyes and light complexion; he was clean shaven. He had no previous criminal record and could read and write, but he was "intemperate"; in other words, he drank. Wilson's mother lived in Nixa, and he had scars on his left knee cap and over his right eye, according to prison records.

Wilson gave his religious affiliation "Campbellite," or Disciples of Christ.

Wilson's behavior in prison must have been less than model. Missouri officials at the time were intent on keeping the prison population to a minimum and usually invoked the three-quarters law to parole an inmate who behaved passably earlier that the full sentence required. For Wilson, his three-quarters time expired on March 8, 1890, but he was not released. Gov. David R. Francis waited until Aug. 20, 1890 to pardon Wilson, release him and restore his citizenship rights.

Will Wilson's role in the murder came as a surprise to his descendants in Oklahoma, but they had heard stories that he "drank quite a lot" while younger although nothing of a murder conviction and prison term. The Brown family in Stroud, OK, says his daughter, only age 6 when Wilson died in 1913, almost certainly was unaware of the prison term.

Despite the newspaper coverage, the "family feud" cited in the Springfield weeklies was never explained. Robert Inman and several neighbors recounted stories about Daniel Stephenson's infidelity(ies), and Bill Wilson appears to have been the most agitated by Stephenson's behavior.

The family and neighbors, other than the Stephensons, eventually must have come to view the murder as proper hill vengeance. Bill Wilson's cousins, John Wesley Inman and wife Nancy Lavanda Wilson, named their son after him in 1890 while he was still serving time in the penitentiary. Bill continued living in the community for another 15 years without apparent incident although he did attempt to move, unsuccessfully, to Oklahoma soon after his release.

Martha Ann Inman Gamble (May 19, 1816-Oct. 10, 1886)

Martha was likely born in Hickman or Carter Cos., TN, but primarily raised in Giles, where the Inman families were neighbors of William W. Gamble around Dry Creek.

His son, Samuel J. Gamble (May 31, 1815-Sept. 18, 1861), married Martha there and joined the Inman exodus to Greene/Christian Co., probably in late 1852. They settled by 1860 in Wilson Township, Greene Co., where they rented a farm near the current city of Battlefield around the Riggs, Childers, Winn and Moore families. The Gambles were separated by about six miles and the James River from her Inman siblings and mother in Christian Co.

Samuel died just after the Battle of Wilson's Creek, and he is buried in Phillips Cemetery, about a mile north of Battlefield in Greene Co.

During the tumultuous war years, Martha moved her large family southwest of Nixa, where they were living in 1870 next door to her likewise-widowed sister, Nancy Ann Inman Wilson.

But, with new son-in-law George T. Keltner taking over farming duties, the Gambles returned to Greene County in the 1870s. In 1880, the family lived on a farm in Brookline Township, Greene Co. on the rim of the James River Valley. Gambles still live there today.

Martha Ann died there in 1886. Burl McConnell recalls a Cal Gamble owning a farm in the area in the 1950s or 1960s. A recent map shows an A. Gamble as a land owner.

Among the known children of Samuel J. and Martha Ann Inman Gamble, who seemed to marry quite late in life:

Louisa Frances (1840) who was still unmarried and living with her mother in 1880.

William J. (1841), a farmer, married Mary E. ? and moved to Christian County during or after the Civil War from Greene County. They had at least two children, Narcissa (1866) and James F. (1858). This marriage license likely was destroyed in the 1865 Ozark courthouse fire.

Nancy J. (1842), who was still unmarried and living with her mother in 1880. Nancy married W.F. Steele at her mother's home on Sept. 1, 1883 before the Rev. J.C. Baxter.

Martha C. (Aug. 14, 1843-Nov. 2, 1925) married George T. Keltner, son of Absalom (1810-1860) and Margueritte Horn (1809) Keltner, of Christian County. Martha and George wed on Jan. 10, 1869 before JP Columbus J. Faught in Christian County, where both families were living at the time. The Horns and Keltners both had migrated from Giles Co.

Martha and George moved with her mother to Brookline Township, Greene Co. in the 1870s. They had at least five children: Mary F. (1870), Walter S.A. (1872), Everett T. (1875), Martha (1876) and W. Franklin (1879).

Lucinda Ellen (1845), who was still unmarried and living with her mother in 1880.

Samuel J. (1846), who was farming and living with his mother in 1880. He later took over the family farm.

Narcissa Arminta (1847).

James M. (1848) married Mattie Franklin on June 23, 1886 at his mother's home before the Rev. J.J. Cole.

Arena/Irena K. (1850) married William Woods, an Indiana native, before 1874. They lived on a farm close to her mother and George T. Keltner. William and Irena had at least three children: Arthur F. (1874), William C. (1875) and Jack G. 1867).

Frank P. (1852), probably named for his uncle, Francis P. Wilson, who had just married Nancy Ann Inman.

Delphina/Melvina (1854) who was unmarried and living with her mother in 1880.

Mary L. Molly (1856), the only one of the Gamble children born in Missouri, was living with her mother in 1880. She married E.T. Robbins of Wilson Township on Sept. 1, 1889 at her brother Samuel J.'s home before Justice of the Peace J.R. Ferguson.

Nancy Ann Inman Wilson (October 1820-Nov. 12, 1915)

Nancy Ann married Francis P. Wilson (1831-Feb. 23, 1864), a Giles Countian,(29) on July 20, 1854 in Greene Co., MO when it still included Porter Township of Christian County. Francis P. was the much younger son of Joel and Mary Wilson of Giles Co. and brother of James H. Wilson, the third husband of Nancy's sister Eliza Louisa.

Standing as witnesses in the ceremony before the Rev. Bryan T. Nowlin were Nancy's brother and nephew, Elkanah D. and James L. Inman.

Sometime before her marriage, Nancy Ann Inman filed a civil suit against Peter Ussery in Greene Co. Circuit Court; the court ordered that Francis P. become party to the case in September 1856.(30)

Ussery lived in southern Maury Co. in 1830, although he had kin in Giles, and he had moved his family to northern Greene Co., MO by 1840 and remained there in 1850; he lived in Dallas Co., MO by 1860.

Nancy's in-laws, Joel and Mary Wilson, joined in a slander suit against Ussery, but its outcome is unknown.(31)

In Porter Township, Nancy Ann and Francis P. set up housekeeping next to her brother Elkanah and his wife Sarah. Springfield federal land office records show Francis P. bought or claimed 40 acres in Section 23, Township 27, Range 22, southeast of Nixa, between Nov. 16, 1857 and Nov. 15, 1858.

The Wilsons had four children: James (May 22, 1856), Mary Louisa (March 20, 1858), William Daniel (Dec. 15, 1859) and Martha Anna Frances (Aug. 4, 1862). Both James and Martha, named for Inman grandparents, died as toddlers.

Before the war began, Francis P., like his brother-in-law Elkanah Inman, was a tobacco farmer, raising a crop worth $1,000 in 1860.

Francis P. enrolled in Co. D of the 8th Regiment, Missouri Cavalry Volunteers at Springfield on August 9, 1862, and he died on Feb. 23, 1864 in the regimental hospital at Duvall's Bluff, AR from pneumonia and chronic diarrhea. Few realize that the major cause of death for most units in the Civil War was not enemy gunfire, but disease.

Military records show Francis P. was 5-feet-8 with fair complexion, hazel eyes and dark hair.

The lives of Francis P.'s and Elkanah Inman's families were always intertwined. Elkanah's wife Sarah served as midwife at the birth of Nancy's children. Elkanah's son Finley Glover took Mary Louisa Wilson as his second wife; Finley Glover's daughter by his first marriage, Sarah Elizabeth, married Will D. Wilson. Will earlier murdered Daniel Stephenson, Elkanah and Sarah's son-in-law. (See separate section under Elkanah and Sarah Moore Inman.)

During the 1870s, Nancy Ann also took in and raised James I. Tyler, the orphaned son of Rufus and Margaret Wilson Tyler. The daughter of James H. and Sarah Hatthorn Wilson and the sister of Nancy Lavanda Wilson (Mrs. John W.) Inman. Margaret married Rufus Tyler in Christian Co. in 1868, and they had one son, James I. (February 1869) but aren't shown in the county in 1870. This couple died young, for James I. is listed as an orphan boarder with aunt Nancy Ann Inman in the 1880 census. James Tyler remained with the family at least until 1900, when he was living with Nancy Ann's son, Will D. Wilson, in Christian Co.

James I. Tyler married I. Ella Herndon (April 1886) on March 14, 1907. Ella was the daughter of Julian Herndon, the new Bank of Nixa president and son of William Holman Herndon, and Lundy Jane Pendleton, the daughter of Anderson A. Pendleton and first wife Lydia C. Brown.

Nancy, Will and Sarah Elizabeth Wilson, Finley Glover and Mary Louisa Inman moved to Craig Co., OK about 1907 together with Aunt Lizzie Inman Sanders. Nancy died Nov. 12, 1915 while living at Earlsboro, OK.

Nancy, Lizzie and Will are buried in the same cemetery, Garden Grove, near Centerview, OK.

Henry Inman

Little record has been found of this son of Lazarus except for tax-roll mentions in Williamson Co., TN in 1810 and 1815. He had moved to Williamson Co. by Nov. 20, 1809, when he is cited in the buyers at the estate sale of William Hunnel Henry of Williamson likely was this man because (James) William is listed in the county in 1815. The Inman settlement in Hickman Co. was near the Williamson Co. line, and their brother Joseph Inman signed the marriage papers of Samuel Faught in Williamson Co. in 1810.

Rebecca Inman (Hinman) Watts

Rebecca, recorded as 'Hinman,' married James Watts on Nov. 2, 1792 in Augusta Co., VA. No other reference to a Hinman surname exists in county records from 1745 to 1800, so she was likely an Inman. The Watts name was carried down in the family of David Alexander Inman (September 1796, VA-1880s, Christian Co., MO), who likely was the last son of David Inman Sr.

David Alexander, who married Elizabeth Carnes, named a middle son John Watts. The Watts family has not been traced.

John Inman (1778-Aug. 7, 1838)

John Inman, born c. 1778, married Susannah Clark on Nov. 6/8, 1796 in Dandridge, Jefferson Co., TN, the hometown of his cousin, Abednego Inman. He is believed to have married again because her name is rarely passed down in the family.

Because of the ubiquity of his first name which initially was rare, but quickly grew in popularity in the family facts on John Inman are scarce. After his marriage, John is next mentioned in Grainger Co., where he was summoned by the court as a possible administrator of his brother David's estate on Nov. 21, 1799. He lived in the early 1800s in Carter Co., TN along Gap Creek, near the Edens family.

His eldest daughter was married in Carter Co. in 1814. There, in 1816, John Inman signed land papers as a witness for James Edens, who had owned land adjoining John's brother James (William) Inman in 1810 on Gap Creek. Later in 1816, John moved to Madison Co., AL, where he is listed in the territorial census.

Around 1820, John moved to Morgan Co., AL, across the river from his brother Isaac and two cousins who were sons of Abednego Inman of east TN: cotton merchant John Ritchie and Ezekiel Inman. Most of the children married in Morgan Co. in the early 1820s, and Susannah Clark Inman probably died,(32) leaving John Inman Sr. with a lone son, Isaac, in the home in 1830 in Morgan Co.

Around 1836, with sons David and Isaac, John rejoined brothers James William and Joseph in Giles Co. John died there on Aug. 7, 1838, and he is buried in Campbellsville Cemetery. Virtually nothing is known of Susannah Clark Inman, whose burial site has not been located.

Children of John Inman Sr.

Jane Inman Moore (c. 1797-1820s)

Jane likely was named for her great-grandmother, Jane Campbell White, who was still alive in 1791 and may have played an active role in raising John Sr., who was left fatherless at age 3 or 4.

Jane Inman married James B. Moore (1794, NC) in Carter Co., TN on Feb. 16, 1814 with Daniel Moore as the surety. The Moores John and Daniel (Sr.) owned land on Gap Creek beside James William Inman, according to an 1810 Carter Co. deed.

The Moores had moved from NC to Carter Co. between 1796 and 1798. James Moore is believed to be the brother of William Moore who married Nancy Hannah Simmerley on Aug. 27, 1819 in Greene Co., TN, but he soon died; she remarried to John W. Inman, son of James William, in 1821 in Carter Co.

Among the children of James and Jane Inman were: Frances "Fanny" (Nov. 20, 1816-April 2, 1838), Sarah (1819-May 1894), and Martha (Nov. 1, 1820-July 1, 1840). Frances and Martha are buried beside their grandfather, John Inman Sr., at Campbellsville Cemetery. The gap in the children suggests that Jane died in the 1820s in Alabama.

James then remarried to a woman unknown and had a son (b. 1830/35), James Jr. (1833), daughter (1830/35) and John S. or L. (1838/39).

James, his second wife (perhaps a Finley or Porter), brother John (1799, TN) and mother Elizabeth (1767, NC) may have traveled to Morgan Co., AL by 1830 and then resettled to Giles Co. where the second wife died, probably in childbirth with son John S. six years later.

James B. married a third time to Nancy Lane Jan. 8, 1840, and they had at least six more children: William J. (1841), Carson C. (1842), Nathaniel (1844), George W. (1846), Robin (1848) and Mary E. (1850).

James B. and first wife Jane Inman Moore were parents of Sarah Moore (1819, TN-May 1894, Christian Co., MO), who married her second cousin Elkanah Inman, son of James William, in the 1830s in Giles Co. This couple moved to Christian Co., MO, but none of the Moores is known to have followed.

James Moore (Jr.), 17, was living with John W. and Hannah Inman in 1850. He married Sarah Jane Long Dec. 19, 1855 before JP Thomas H. Noblitt.

James B. and Nancy Lane Moore are not found in TN or, thus far, in MO in 1860.

David H. (c. 1800-late 1850)

David, possibly David Henry, married Martha Alexander on July 18, 1822 in Morgan Co., AL. David Henry would have memorialized the names of John Sr.'s two (possibly) dead older brothers.

Martha Alexander appears to have been a niece of Martha Alexander who married and Alexander Inman, wife of John Sr.'s Alexander who married Isaac White Inman and granddaughter of Jeremiah Alexander. David H. and Martha Inman named a son Jeremiah, apparently in memory of this Revolutionary War veteran.

In the mid-1830s, David came to Giles Co. with his father, John, and remained there in 1840 with his family of six sons and three daughters as well as brother Isaac P.

David and eldest son Alexander appear to have died at the same time, in an accident or epidemic, of late 1850. Both their probates were filed in January 1851 in Lawrence Co., TN.

David H's wife Martha was still living, in Lawrence, in 1860 with a possible daughter.

Among the children of David H. and Martha Alexander Inman:

Alexander (1820/25-late 1850) married Martha Ann ? (1824) and had four children: James T. (1845), Martha E. (1847), William (1850) and Sarah (1851). A fifth child, Mary (1852/3), is found in Martha Ann's household in 1860, probably the daughter of John C. and Sarah C. Inman, who died in 1857 and 1852, respectively, and are buried in Campbellsville Cemetery.

Joseph (speculative), who may have married Elizabeth (1831) and had one son Joseph J. (1856-1936) who married Mary Elizabeth ? and is buried at Choate's Creek Cemetery, Giles Co. Elizabeth is shown as a widow in 1860.

John C. (1827-1857) married Sarah C. Inman, and the couple is buried in Campbellsville Cemetery. (He may have married first to Mary A. Lyles on March 9, 1844.) The Pulaski Western Star reported that J.C. Inman married S.C. (Sarah Catherine or Caroline) Inman on Nov. 22, 1849.(33) S.C. Inman, was a cousin, likely one of the two missing daughters of James C. Inman who died in 1844.

James H.L. married Sarah J. Randolph Sept. 6, 1854 in Lawrence Co.

Louisa J. (possible) married Vines H. Cross on Oct. 31, 1850 in Lawrence Co.

Jeremiah M. (Milton?) (1836) married, first, M.D.L. Redding in February 1856 and then Ruthinda J. Liles/Lyles (1838) on March 25, 1859, and they had one child by 1860, William David, born that year. (Jeremiah Milton was a Parker family name.)

David L. (1840) married Mary M. Howard on Aug. 17, 1858 in Lawrence Co., and they had one daughter by 1860: Martha (1859). David L. was living next door to his mother Martha in Giles in 1860.

Two daughters, unknown, besides Louisa J. Probably one was Margaret M. who married James Randolph, probable brother of Sarah, on July 22, 1853 in Lawrence Co.

Isaac P. Inman (Jan. 3, 1803-July 24, 1873)

Isaac P., whose father is confirmed by a family Bible, was living with John in Morgan Co. in mid-1830, but on Sept. 12, he married Nancy Jane Hunter Faught (Sept. 25, 1809, AL-Sept. 28, 1892) , apparently the widow of the brother or nephew of Wiley Blount Faught Sr. of Alabama and Giles Co.

Isaac's middle name likely was Porter, possibly the surname of John's second wife.

Isaac's family was extremely well educated Calvin W. and Martha M. were teachers at the old Ozark, MO high school, which was the leading secondary school in the frontier Ozarks and his peripatetic nature suggests he, too, was a teacher in the early days or perhaps a preacher and merchant. After moving to Giles Co. with his father in the mid-1830s, Isaac farmed a small acreage beside his brother Andrew and cousin Elkanah south of Campbellsville, TN. Isaac was a Giles Co. resident in October 1838 when mail was waiting for him at Pulaski.(34) Isaac and Andrew likely took over their father's holdings.

Isaac, though, was found in Weakley Co. of West TN in the 1850 census, where Andrew had been among the early pioneers.

He likely moved back to Giles or made contact with the family, joining the Inmans and Faughts on a late 1852 move to Christian Co., MO. By 1855, he was a merchant on the town square of the "old village" of Ozark, but he appears to have lost his town property in a legal dispute over delinquent taxes or bad debts.

He had a sizable farm, however, about five miles west of Ozark, near the current city of Nixa and the tobacco farm of cousin Elkanah Inman and his wife, also Isaac's niece, Sarah Moore.

Before 1870, Isaac, his family and many of the Faughts moved to the Denton, TX area, where Isaac settled at Pilot Point. He died there and is buried at its Skinner Cemetery with his wife.

Nancy and Isaac had seven children:

1. John (Nov. 13, 1831, AL-Feb. 5, 1848, Giles Co., d.s.p.),

2. Calvin W. (Feb. 3, 1833, AL, d.s.p.). Calvin is shown as "Carrollton" Inman, boarding with his sister Martha in Denton, TX in 1900.

3. Martha M. (Dec. 10, 1836, Giles Co., TN-Dec. 20, 1912) who married Judge Joseph A. Carroll Jr. (Nov. 28, 1832, Pike Co., MO).(35) He lived in Louisiana, MO until September 1853 when he headed for Tehuacano Springs, Limestone Co. TX, and hired himself to a settler to make rails for a living. Carroll removed to Barnard's trading house on the Brazos, and in August 1854 he was appointed deputy surveyor of Denton land district, a huge frontier area.

In 1857, after an examination, he was admitted to the bar in the district court at Gainesville. He laid out the town of Denton, was appointed commissioner by the county court to sell lots and practice law until 1861. He married first to Celia J. Burrows, an orphan, on March 18, 1858. They had two children who survived infancy: Secesia and Sidney Johnston, who attended now-Texas A&M.

Carroll enrolled in the Texas Confederate forces, in Welsh's Co., and became a lieutenant in a unit fighting in the Indian Territory, at Bird Creek, Round Mountain and Chustenallah. He became adjutant general at the battles of Bird Creek and Elk Horn. In fall 1862 he was elected major of De Morse's 29th TX Cavalry at Elk Creek, Cabin Creek, Prairie de Anne, Camden and Jenkins' Ferry. He was discharged at Hempstead, TX in June 1865 and resumed the practice of law. His wife died in early May 1869.

According to The Encyclopedia of the New West,(36) Carroll then married "Martha Inmon, daughter of Isaac Inmon, an excellent man, who had been one of the first settlers of Obion Co., TN,(37) since deceased, but his widow resides with Judge Carroll." In February 1876, Maj. Carroll was elected judge of the district and served until Jan. 1, 1881. He declined re-election and entered the banking business in Denton. Judge Carroll died by 1900, but Martha continued living on Oak Street then.

4. Sarah Finney/Finley (Sept. 19, 1838-1920, m. James Flow).

5. Joseph Martin (April 23, 1841-Oct. 4, 1925, m. Delia Elmore).

6. Samuel (Sept. 24, 1842, probably d.s.p.).

7. Isaac Daniel (Jan. 9, 1851-March 27, 1939). An Isaac "S." Inman, probably Isaac D., from Christian Co., completed a late tour of Civil War duty from Sept. 25 to Nov. 14, 1864, chasing rebels in Ozark Co., under Capt. Stephen Sink of Nixa. Young teenagers, however, often lied about their ages and served in latter stages of the war when manpower in these depopulated counties was almost non-existent.

Isaac Daniel married Malinda L. Montgomery, the daughter of Jefferson C. Montgomery and Mary Angeline Jones.(38) The Inmans were married Jan. 16, 1879 in Bloomfield, Cooke Co., TX. They are buried at Walling Cemetery in Denton Co., TX, and had five children; Otis J. (April 13, 1880-April 11, 1958, m. Phoebe Bates, 1913); Homer Edward (Aug. 24, 1882-Dec. 18, 1934, m. Eva Walker, 1911); Ethel (July 8, 1885-Nov. 16, 1962, d.s.p.); James Chandler (Sept. 27, 1887-Dec. 8, 1934, m. Jessie South, 1917); and Earl (Jan. 15, 1889-Dec. 25, 1974, m. Myrtle Flowers).

Andrew (1805-1872)

Andrew's paternity has not been definitely established, but signs point to John because of Andrew's close ties with Isaac P. Inman and old stories that he was a cousin to the sons of James William.

On the other hand, Andrew and his wife named his second daughter Martha, which by frontier tradition would have honored the husband's mother. James and Martha were names commonly given by Andrew's children. His oldest child, Mary Jane, named her first two children James William and Martha Caroline. Another child was named Erasmus Wilson.)

He first appears as an adult, signing survey documents for Samuel Faught with apparent brother Isaac Inman on Feb. 29, 1827 in Giles. He had an independent streak, which took him that year to Weakley Co. of West TN among its first settlers.

By 1840, he eventually returned to Giles Co., where he farmed on his land next to Elkanah and Isaac P., who then moved to Weakley Co.

Andrew first married, before 1829, to Margaret Perry; her parents are unknown, but Perrys were living in Pulaski by 1819 and owned a mercantile business there. The couple had at least eight children, all born in TN, before they, too, moved to southwest Missouri in the great migration of late 1852.

True to his independent streak, however, Andrew moved farther west than his brother Isaac, cousin Elkanah and nephew James C., settling in Lawrence Co., MO near Verona. At the time, a road ran from Springfield through Porter Township, Christian Co. to the site of modern Mt. Vernon in Lawrence Co.

There, Margaret died on May 24, 1858, and she was buried in Lee Cemetery, Verona. Andrew soon remarried to a widow, Mary Cooper Owens, and they had three more children before Andrew died in 1872.

Mary then moved to Barry Co. by 1880, where she lived with her three children in King's Prairie Township.

Andrew is buried beside his first wife while Mary Cooper Inman (1821) is interred at Goss Cemetery near Phelps and Mt. Vernon, MO.

Among the children of Andrew by Margaret Perry:

Mary Jane (June 1829-March 1905) married Robert Hillhouse of Lawrence Co., TN in 1847.

Robert and Mary Jane lived on Spring River near Verona. They had 13 children: James William (Sept. 18, 1848-Feb. 21, 1940, m. Nancy Adeline Maxwell), Martha Caroline (Feb. 18, 1850-Jan. 17, 1947, m. James Gibson, Thomas Yardell), George Andrew (May 13, 1851-April 7, 1942, m. Mary Flow, Martha Kirby), Margaret Elizabeth (Feb. 4, 1853-March 13, 1934, m. James Willis Sutton), John L. (Nov. 1, 1856-Jan. 28, 1863), infant (d. November 1857), Thomas Jefferson (Nov. 2, 1858-Jan. 19, 1934, m. Susan Isabell Turner), infant (d. 1860 at birth), Erasmus Wilson (Dec. 8, 1861-May 25,1 944, m. Mary Jane White), Nancy Ann (Nov. 21, 1964-April 8, 1953, m. William Lewis Allen), Mary Jane (April 4, 1867-Aug. 31, 1950, m. Benton Roscoe Fenton), Ollie May (June 19, 1869-?, m. Ira Askins) and Robert Clinton (Nov. 7, 1871-July 9, 1959, m. Minnie Bell Pharris).

Martha C. (1832-1916) married Ottawa Nance in 1853 in Lawrence Co., MO. She is buried in Garrison Cemetery, Christian Co., MO. The couple had nine children: Mary Jane m. William "Billy" Else, Sarah m. Robert Nance, Amelia m. John Roller, Martha m. John Hollingsworth, Margaret m. George Valendingham, John William m. Jane Goad, George (d.s.p.), Jim (1870-1943, m. Bessie Stephens) and an infant.

Turzy Ann (1834-1861) married James Dobbins Springer in 1856, and they lived near Aurora, Lawrence Co., MO. She is buried in Lee Cemetery. The couple had three children: Robert Hillhouse (1856-d. in TX, m. Elvira Morris), Margaret Jane (1859-1924, m. John McDonald) and James Bowie (1861-d. in CA, m. Bell Roswell).

Dorcas Amanda (1836-d. in Lincoln, AR) married Steve Thomas and had two children: Susan and William.

Sarah H. (1836-1866) married William Davis on Nov. 15, 1855 and is buried in Lee Cemetery. they had four children: Rube, Robert, George (1856-1921 m. Mary) and John.

Frances Margaret (1840-1889) married Houston Marbut on March 7, 1861 and is buried in Calton Cemetery, Barry Co., MO. The couple had eight children: Vedas Houston m. Bessie Bridges, Clinton m. Emma Thomas, William Madison m. Nina Marbut, Annas m. Adell Powell, Mary Lucinda m. James T. Henderson, Tursie Elvira m. James Henderson, Leota m. Felix Jackson and Emma Frances m. Robert Ethridge.

Andrew Jackson (1843-1857).

William (1845-1865), who enrolled in the Civil War in 1863 and died of war-related consumption two years later.

Among the children of Andrew and Mary Cooper Owens Inman:

Louisa Elizabeth "Liza" (May 28, 1862-Sept. 19, 1897) married her brother-in-law, Robert Henderson, after her sister Rachael Amanda died. Robert and Liza had six children: Chloe m. W. W. Davis, Dillie m. L.A. Bandy, Elzy m. Florence Wormington, Ora m. Elzy Wormington, Allie m. Ernest Williams, and Newton m. Alma Eden.

Rachael Amanda (1864-June 8, 1882) married Robert Henderson and died during the birth of her first child, who also died.

Isaac Cooper (Feb. 2, 1867-May 11, 1942) married Miranda Jane Marbut (May 5, 1869-Dec. 16, 1961), the niece of Houston Marbut, the husband of Isaac's half-sister Frances, on Oct. 10, 1886.

Isaac is buried in Bethel Cemetery, southeast of Monett, Barry Co., MO.

The couple had nine children: Gertie Viola (April 23, 1887-Jan. 11, 1975, m. Ben Henderson, Lavonus Hughey), Gracie Elmira (July 11, 1889-October 1949, m. Lavonus Hughey), Floyd Manson (Aug. 11, 1891-Feb. 14, 1961, m. Nellie Jane Marshall, Julia Robbins), Denver Madison (Sept. 21, 1893-June 12, 1975, m. Minnie Carpenter), Mintie Mary Rowena (Jan 21, 1896, m. Marshall Hughey, Truman Burbridge), Clinton Elvance (May 2, 1897-Dec. 1, 1986, m. Ethel Carpenter), Nettie Lou Reta (Aug. 10, 1901, m. Webster Thomas, Ira Shephard, Ray Williams) Arlie Goldman (Dec. 24, 1903 m. Ocie Roller, Opal Henderson Hayward) and Wilmer Laverne (July 16, 1907-March 10, 1928, d.s.p.).

Major Joseph (J. or W., Jasper?) Inman (1780-1855)

Left fatherless as a toddler in Augusta Co., VA, young Joseph Inman was always tied to his brother, James William, who may have raised him. The two moved together to TN, where they appear on the 1799 tax rolls of Grainger Co.; they apparently were mining saltpetre from a local cave for sale to ammunitions makers. They also likely were joined by brother David in helping run a mill in Grainger Co. on Inman's Mill Creek that cousin Abednego may have owned.

After David's death in 1799, Joseph was shown paying taxes on 133 acres in Grainger Co., TN that may have been land jointly held with older brothers David and James William, who is shown paying poll tax there that year. (David died without real property in his probate.) Jointly held land, formed into a family compound, was a tradition that the Inman family followed until well into the 1900s in Missouri.

Around 1807, Joseph moved with James William to Hickman Co., TN, likely in connection with the wagon train of Adam Wilson, a long-time friend and neighbor of the Inmans. Wilson in 1806 became the first permanent white settler of Hickman (then-Dickson) Co., TN, and his son William and grandson James became early leaders in the sparsely populated area.

The new county was established in January 1808, and in May, Joseph was elected second major in the new Hickman Co. militia, serving under Capt. John Holland and first Maj. Joseph Wilson, another son of Adam. The Hickman Co. records burned during the Civil War, and orally based histories of the county contain no other mention of Joseph.

Joseph appears as bondsman for the marriage of Samuel Faught, who had lived in Hickman and Warren Cos., and Nancy Dean in neighboring Williamson Co., TN in 1810. Joseph may not have lived in Williamson, because the families are believed to have resided near the Hickman-Williamson county line. Joseph's brother Henry appears in Williamson in 1810 and 1815 tax records while James William's name appears on the 1815 rolls.

Joseph's 1852 land bounty application shows he was living in Hickman Co. when he enlisted at Fayetteville, Lincoln Co., TN on Sept. 20, 1813 and became 2nd major in the 2nd Regiment of the West TN militia. Joseph was discharged April 20, 1814 after his service in the Creek War. He served under Col. Levi Hammonds and Capt. Alex Lowry. According to his military records, Joseph also fought in the Florida or Seminole War of 1836.

The existing TN censuses of 1820 show no traces of Joseph, even though Hickman Co.'s list has been preserved. During this period, all the brothers may have lived in Alabama. But on Sept. 10, 1827, both James William and Joseph received 25-acre state grants in Giles Co., TN, where they appear in the 1830 census.

Many researchers concluded Joseph had two wives, but no documentation has been provided for the first. The 1850 census shows him living with wife 'Fanney' or Francis (per her gravestone), b. 1791/2, TN, and the dates match the figures for Joseph's wife in the 1830 census. Jymie Carol Ford Inman of Kerens, TX says this woman was Frances Chapman, a member of a well-established Giles Co. family who had settled there by 1820 from East TN.(39)

In 1850, Joseph and Fanny were living almost next door to James Chapman, b. 1780, TN, and the later Inmans had numerous dealings with Benjamin and Stanford Chapman of Ozark, MO, who had emigrated to Christian Co. from Giles.

Fanny passed away on Jan. 2, 1855, and she is buried in Old Salem Cemetery on Dry Creek Road south of Campbellsville, TN. The cemetery is co-located with the now-destroyed Old Salem Methodist Church, a denomination which some Inmans appear to have embraced after the great revival of 1800-1804 on the frontier.

Joseph's death followed shortly that year after he had written perhaps the first true will of this Inman line. He bequeathed his entire estate in 1855 to a daughter and three sons of his late nephew James C. Inman, James William's son who died September 11, 1844 amid the black tongue epidemic that swept Middle TN. After James C.'s early death, his family likely was taken in by Joseph and Fanny, both of whom are fondly remembered in dozens of namesake Inman offspring.

Joseph gave Susan Inman (Mrs. Porter) McAllister the land where she and her husband were living "and control of it without the husband's approval." Her little brother received $200. But the bulk of the estate "including a sizable number of slaves" went to their brothers, Joseph C. and John C., who also became executors of the estate.

Joseph's will shows that he cared deeply about the institution of slavery and the care of his slaves: "And it is my earnest wish and desire that my slaves who have always been dutiful and obedient should be kept together, and well fed & clothed, and in every respect well treated. And if either one of my two great nephews Joseph C. and John C. desire or be compelled to sell any of the slaves...that they will permit her or him or them to select & choose their homes and masters. And if either of them should die without selling or disposing of the...that then they so arrange it by their last will and testament that said slaves be sold, allowing them the privilege of selecting their masters or be kept together and not hired out...My great wish & anxiety being to secure to them kind and good treatment."

The will soon became one of the great legal cases on this institution in antebellum TN history. On Sept. 13, 1855, John C. and Joseph C. freed their great-uncle's slave Elias, and the emancipation papers were filed in the Giles Co. register's office. Joseph C. then tried to annul the agreement. John C. died in 1858, but Joseph pursued the case as John C.'s co-executor because he was in serious financial straits - 'insolvent,' according to another lawsuit. In 1859, Elias himself sued by an unlikely 'next friend,' Quarles T. Mayfield, a Giles Co. slave trader and the other co-executor of John C.'s will and estate. Attorneys Thomas M. Jones and Calvin Clark of Pulaski represented Elias, and the local court ruled that he should be shipped to the west coast of Africa. The case went to the TN Supreme Court.

Isaac (White?) Inman (1781-1841)

Likely the last of Lazarus and Elizabeth White Inman's children, Isaac may have been born after Lazarus' death - or at least after the death of grandfather Isaac White, who died in 1781.

Little is known about this man until he signs the verification of brother David's estate settlement in 1803 in Grainger Co., TN. He next is found in Smith Co., TN, c. Aug. 6, 1806, petitioning with other residents for the formation of a new county that was called Warren and centered on the seat of McMinnville, TN. The petition is remarkable for the number of Campbells and Rodgers/Rogers families that appears; Isaac's grandmother was a Campbell, and his aunt married Robert Rogers in Augusta Co., VA.

Also on the petition were John and Samuel Faught, near-relatives of Wiley Blount Sr. and Samuel Faught, brothers who settled near Huntsville, AL and Giles Co., TN.

By 1817, Isaac White Inman had settled outside Huntsville, AL, near his cousins, John Ritchie and Ezekiel Inman.

Isaac is said to have married Martha Alexander, the daughter of Revolutionary War soldier Jeremiah Alexander from Augusta Co., VA and then NC. If so, she died by 1817, when he married in Morgan Co., AL to Martha Frost.

Isaac's will, dated 1841, notes his wife Martha and children Lucinda, Green Lazarus, James H. and Sarah (Mitchell). The naming pattern suggests that Isaac, too, was raised by James William after Lazarus' early death.

The Wilsons

Joel and Mary Wilson

Joel (Adam?) Wilson was born circa 1784 in North Carolina, probably to William Wilson.

William moved from Rowan/Burke Cos., NC to VA, Greene Co., TN and SC before returning to Greene and Jefferson Cos., TN and then Hickman Co., TN. William became the first presiding judge of the Hickman Co. Court in 1808, and he is found in the 1820 Hickman census with six male and six female dependents, including a possible second wife. Among the

known children were James (c. 1780), Benjamin (1789, SC) and Jane (m. Jared Curl); other suspected children are Joel and Martha (1780, VA), wife of James William Inman.

William Wilson was the son of Adam I, the first permanent white settler of the area of Dickson Co., TN that became Hickman.

According to family stories in east TN, Adam and brother James came to America from Ireland, and they settled for a time in Rowan Co., NC, where they are found assigned to road duties in 1775 with Inman and Wakefield family members.

Joel Wilson first appears in legal records in 1811, when he paid taxes in Maury Co., just east of Hickman Co. He had likely just married to Mary (b. 1794, NC, perhaps Sanders), and Joel soon mustered into a TN militia volunteer unit in the Creek War (simultaneous with the War of 1812). Company rolls show that Joel "Wilson" (40) was mustered into Capt. Creel's Co. of the 2nd or Col. A. Cheatham's Regiment, West TN Militia, on Jan 28, 1814, after marching to Fayetteville, Lincoln Co., TN.(41) The citizen-soldiers were responding to Gen. Andrew Jackson's call for help after he experienced a severe manpower shortage in January in his campaign against the Creeks; ill- or unpaid men whose enlistments expired simply had melted away from Jackson forces.

The company, composed of men from Davidson (Nashville), Williamson and Maury Cos., was mustered out on May 10, 1814, after the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, which decimated the Creeks and brought them to the treaty table where they ceded most of northern and eastern Alabama.

Joel and Mary had four children, two sons and two daughters, all under 10, by the 1820 Maury Co. census. By 1830, Joel had moved just south, to Giles Co., TN, where he and Mary had five sons and four daughters.

During the 1830s, at least four more sons were born: Francis P. (1831), Daniel W. (1834) and Joel A. (1837), who was consistently shown as retarded in censuses, and another who must have died in the 1840s, perhaps the black tongue or diphtheria epidemic of 1844 that laid waste to Middle TN.

The 1840 census shows six sons and a single daughter still at home - among them the second son, James H. Unaccounted for were three sons and three daughters. While the eldest son may have married, two sons born in the 1820s disappeared, and both were not likely of marrying age.

In 1850, an aging Joel and Mary were living beside James H. along Dry Creek, Giles Co. with the three known sons born in the 1830s. Neither Joel nor James H. are shown with real estate, although this census appears to have omitted numerous landholdings. If neither had land, they probably lived and/or worked on the extensive properties held by John W. Inman, the stepson of Joel's sister, Martha Wilson Inman, and her brother-in-law Maj. Joseph J. Inman along Dry, Big and Weakley Creeks.

Another likely son was Franklin Grandison Wilson, who married Susan M. Dickey in 1852 and remained in Giles Co. at least through 1860.(42)

In late 1852, most of the Inman, Faught and Wilson families of Giles sold their land, loaded wagons and headed for southwest Missouri, likely along the southern route, across the Mississippi River at Helena, AR, along the Crowley Ridge military road and up to Christian (then-Greene) Co., MO on the Springfield-Forsyth Road. All the known Wilson sons joined the wagon train except Daniel W., although he may have veered off and settled in Arkansas.

Joel and Mary are known to have made the trip to Christian Co., though in their mid- to late-60s, because they filed suit against Peter Ussery in Greene Co. Circuit Court for slander. The lone reference came in September 1855 (43) when Ussery's attorney filed for a change of venue to another court in the circuit.

Mary's identity in this suit is confirmed because Nancy Ann Inman, daughter of James William and Martha Wilson Inman, filed a similar suit against Ussery; Nancy Ann in 1854 married Mary and Joel's son, Francis P., in Greene Co., and the court ordered that Francis P. become party to the case in September 1856.(44)

Ussery lived in southern Maury Co. in 1830, although he had kin in Giles, and he had moved his family to northern Greene Co., MO by 1840 and remained there in 1850; he lived in Dallas Co., MO by 1860. The lawsuit may refer to a younger Peter Ussery.

The lawsuit provides the only proof that Joel, 71 by then, and Mary, in her early 60s, lived until after 1855 and that they came to Missouri. They are not listed in the 1860 Christian or Greene Co. censuses and almost certainly died in the intervening four years.

No stones have been found for the couple, but the same has occurred for everyone in this family in Christian Co. before 1900. They likely were buried in the so-called Inman-Wilson family cemetery that was destroyed, reportedly by accident in the late 1800s by the Joneses, southwest of Nixa, MO.

James H. and Sarah Emily Hawthorn Wilson

James H. Wilson, the second son and third child of Joel and Mary Wilson, was born in 1818/20,(45) probably in Maury Co., TN, not long after Joel had returned from his service in the Creek War.

James H. attended school in Giles Co., perhaps under neighbor Jeremiah Parker, a Latin teacher and tutor and father of Mary Elizabeth "Polly" Parker (Mrs. Walter) McConnell. James H.'s letters of resignation and other Civil War correspondence indicate he had a highly stylized, fluid script and a firm command of formal English.

James H. married first circa 1841 to Sarah Emily Hawthorn (pronounced Há-thorn), the daughter of James Hawthorn of Lawrence Co. and the late Sarah Forbis, although the marriage records were destroyed in the 1858 fire or 1864 occupation of the Giles Co. Courthouse.

In quick succession, the young Wilson couple had four daughters: Mary V. (1842), Margaret (1844), Nancy Lavanda (Oct. 14, 1846) and Sarah Catherine (1848). Living with the Wilsons in 1850 was Emily's 42-year-old deaf sister, Nancy, who remained behind in Lawrence Co. and married.

Emily died in late 1850 or 1851, and James H. remarried on Feb. 10, 1852 to Eliza Louisa Inman Glover (December 1813 - 1910/17), his slightly older cousin and daughter of James William and Martha Wilson Inman. "Lizzie," who was barren, had married Finley Glover of Giles Co. in the 1830s, but he died by 1847.

James H. and Lizzie moved with the other Inmans, Wilsons and Faughts to Christian Co. in late 1852, and they were living in Porter Township in 1860 with the four daughters and Jesse Wood, an 11-year-old boy born in MO.

James originally was a tenant; the 1856 tax lists show he owned a horse (worth $500?), a cow and three mules. But James H. assembled a farm worth $1,000 and personal property of another $1,040 by 1860.

Living with the family, too, was James' brother Joel, who was something of the village idiot. In 1860, he is shown unable to read and write; within 10 years, Joel was a farm laborer living with the late James H.'s daughter Mary Wilson Inman Puryear, and her husband. The 1880 census flatly lists Joel as an "idiot" and "insane" while living with Nancy Ann Inman (Mrs. Francis P.) Wilson, his sister-in-law.

James H. and the 1st Arkansas Cavalry

With the rumbles from the Battle of Wilson's Creek audible in Porter Township and marauders scourging the countryside, James H. enlisted as a lieutenant in Co. D, 1st Regiment, Arkansas Union Cavalry on June 10, 1862 at Cassville. This regular army enlistment contrasted with the Missouri militia duty that most of the neighbors opted for.(46)

James H. mustered in a month later in Springfield and quickly became a valued member of the high command. Before he actually was serving, James H. was appointed regimental quartermaster - in charge of ensuring supplies, horses and other gear for the entire 1st Regiment - on June 16, 1862, under the order of the Adjutant General's Office and assigned to Co. D as the first lieutenant on June 23.

On Nov. 1, 1862, he was appointed "extra" first lieutenant, apparently in recognition of these double duties. He was detached by Brig. Gen. F. J. Herron as the post quartermaster at Fayetteville, AR on Dec. 16, 1862; Fayetteville then was serving as the headquarters for the regiment, which was ranging across northern AR and southern MO.

The special appointment letter, which has been preserved, states:

HdQrs. Post of Fayetteville, Ark
December 16th, 1862
Special Post Order No. 11
Lt. J. L. (sic) Wilson RQM 1st Ark Cav is hereby assigned to duty as Post Quartermaster.
He will report to these headquarters for instruction & duty without delay.
By command
Col. D. Wickersham
Comdg Post
D. L. Canfield
Lt.. & Post Adjutant
Col. M. Larue Harrison
Comdg 1st Ark Cav
James H. began trying to trim his multiple duties because of health concerns and work overload in early 1863. In a letter preserved in AR and federal files, he wrote:
Fayetteville, Ark.
Jany 30, 1863
Col:
I hereby very respectfully ask to be relieved from the duties of Regt. Q.M. or from the post (of extra lieutenant). I can not in justice to myself or the parties concerned do the duties of both.
Respectfully
Your Obt. Servt. (Obedient Servant)
J. H. Wilson
1 Lt & QM
1 Ark Cavy & AAQM
To: Col. M. Larue Harrison (?)
Comdg Post
Instead, on April 12, 1863, James H. was promoted to post "C.S." while acting as quartermaster for the 1st Arkansas Brigade. In September and October, he was in charge of all supplies for all AR volunteers in the field. In May, accompanied by a blizzard of correspondence, James H. was granted permission to travel from Fayetteville to St. Louis for "expediting" official business. Wrote commanding Col. J. J. Cloud form Springfield: "The 1st Ark need (sic) horses and b(?) to fit them for active service."

James H.'s health problems escalated and were confirmed by Dr. H. J. (or Q. or G.) Maynard, a surgeon with the 1st Arkansas. On Dec. 29, 1863 at Fayetteville, Maynard reported that "with an inherited tendency of disease of the lungs, his (James H.'s) close confinement and hard duty is rapidly undermining his health and that at this time there is tubercular deposit in the lung."(47)

Dr. Maynard added that "in consequence thereof, he is, in my opinion, unfit for duty. I further declare my belief that he will not be able to continue his duties with justice to himself and benefit the service."

That same day, James H. submitted his request for permission to resign:

Fayetteville, AR
Dec. 29th, 1863
Maj Gen J. M. Schofield
Comdg Dept of the Mo
St. Louis, MO:
I have the honor hereby to tender my resignation as 1st Lt and Qr. M. 1st Ark Cavy. As (otherwise unreadable) to a reason for doing so, I beg leave to submit the following facts: that I have been in the service now two years and four months; the greater part of which have I spent in the Southwest - that I have never been relieved from duty a single day - have never asked it, and that as a consequence my physical energies are becoming pros mall (so small, pretty small?), and I need rest. (See surgeon's certificate accompanying.) My reports are all in and approved up to date, & I will account for all the property now in my possession. I was last paid by Maj. Sullivan up to October 31st, 1863.
I have the honor to be respectfully
Your Obt. Sert. J. H. Wilson, 1 Lt.
& QM, 1 Ark Cav
Under Special Order #11, Department of Missouri, James H. was allowed to resign for ill health, effective Jan. 12, 1864, by Major Gen. Schofield, then in St. Louis. Schofield had served as chief of staff under Gen. Nathaniel Lyon at the Battle of Wilson's Creek.

But the chaos accompanying the war delayed the effective date. On Jan. 14, 1864, Lt. Col. T. W. Bishop, then commanding the 1st Arkansas, wrote to his superiors inquiring about the status. "Has the resignation of Lieut. J. H. Wilson, R.Q.M., First Ark., been acted upon?" Bishop from Fayetteville wrote in a U.S. military telegraph to Assistant Adjutant Gen. O. D. Greene of St. Louis (who also is referred to in James H.'s file as assistant adjutant general). "Being now in command of the regiment, I am desirous of knowing."

Greene's response, probably backdated to Jan. 12, 1864, followed:

Headquarters
Department of the Missouri
St. Louis, Mo. Jan'y 12th, 1864
Special Order No. 11 (extra Lieut?)
9. The following names officers (sic), having tendered their resignations, and failed to exhibit therewith the necessary evidence in General Orders No. 138 series of 1863 from the War Department, are hereby directed to be honorably discharged with the condition that they shall (not) receive a final payment until they have satisfied the Pay Department that they are not indebted to the Government, to wit:
1st Lieutenant J. H. Wilson, R.Q.M., 1st Arkansas Cavly Vols.
By command of
Major General Schofield
Signed,
O. D. Greene
Assistant Adjutant General
Christian County probate records suggest James H. Wilson died, at age 45, in the summer of 1865; his second wife Eliza acted as administrator while Elkah Inman provided the security or bond that September.

By 1870, Eliza Louisa Inman Glover Wood Wilson was doing domestic work and living with Charley and Matilda Herndon nest door to Nancy Inman Wilson's house. But Eliza married again to William Sanders on Sept. 7, 1871 before JP B. F. Hollowell. (See section on Eliza Louisa Inman/Nancy Ann Inman Wilson.)

William, who died in 1891, was the brother-in-law of Ezekial Inman (1804, TN), who first had married Sally Sanders, but any relation between the two Inman families has not been documented. Ezekial's six children by his first wife, however, all emigrated from KY and Indiana to the area along the Greene-Christian County line in the 1840s with their Sanders guardians. After Sally's death, Ezekiel essentially farmed out the children and left for Illinois for a second and third marriage that resulted in 17 children total. He died in Bethel, MO.

John Wesley and Nancy Lavanda Wilson Inman

(See section on Inmans)

FOOTNOTES

1. Abednego Inman, son of Ezekiel, spoke of this descent when he nevertheless took the oath of allegiance to the colonies in the Revolutionary War, 1778, Rowan Co., NC.

2. Written by Nancy Lavinia Goins Edwards of Clinton, TN for her granddaughter Dorothy Reilly on March 30, 1906 "from memory, when she was old, of what she had heard and what she recalled. It is to be considered there were others, but these she remembered." Lavinia was a double Inman descendant of Ezekiel Inman (c. 1720-after 1793) through his daughter Susannah's and his son Shadrack's descendants.

3. The first Inman known to have lived in the early western portions of VA was Abraham, who died in the rugged pioneer stages of Westmoreland Co. on the Potomac River. He wrote a will dated April 18, 1662 and proven 8/20/1662. His legatees were Sarah and Margaret Jones, daughters of Nathaniel Jones; Daniel White; Michael Phillips; and Nathaniel Jones. Westmoreland County lies in VA's Northern Neck; it was the home of the (George) Washington family and several Lees; the county was across the Potomac from Maryland. Abraham left no apparent children among his heirs. He is said to have been the brother of Edward and Ralph Inman of Massachusetts; Edward, a glover who married a Phillips widow, and Ralph became founders of the Rhode Island branch of the Inmans.

4. Will of Absalom Haworth, Frederick Co., VA.

5. Chronicles of Scotch-Irish Settlement in Virginia, Augusta County Court Records, 1745-1800, Chalkley, Vol. II, p. 416.

6. History of Augusta Co., VA, J. Lewis Peyton, 1953, p. 143.

7. Chalkley, Vol. III.

8. Chalkley, Vol. I, p. 94.

9. Ibid, p. 144.

10. Abstract of Land Grant Surveys, 1761-1791, Books 0-1, Rockingham, Augusta and Rockbridge Cos., Peter Kaylor, p. 159.

11. Chalkley, Vol. III.

12. Ibid, Vol. II, p. 422.

13. Ibid., Vol. I, p. 390.

14. Among the 5th Survey District grants of TN are: 1) the March 1808 entry by Richard Walker for 50 acres in Grainger Co. between the Holston River and Richland Creek on the head of Inman's Mill Creek adjoining Jonakin's Survey (the entry was for part of warrant #15 for 640 acres issued to Thomas Jonakin (Jarnagin of Greene/Jefferson Cos.) from Carter's office, date not cited); and 2) the Sept. 7, 1811 entry by James A. Perryman for 100 acres in Claiborne Co. on a ridge between Russell's Creek and Powell's River on the north side of the wagon road that leads from James Roddy's to Abel Langham's northwest to a saltpetre cave formerly worked by the Inmans.

15. This mine may have belonged to Abednego Inman, son of Ezekiel, and first cousin of the Inman brothers. A 1786 Greene Co. Court document cites Abednego's mill which lay across the county line, but it fails to cite which county; Grainger and Greene adjoined each other at the time.

16. The Brazeales of Grainger Co. moved in the 1830s to Greene and Christian Cos., MO, along with the Phillips and McElhany families.

17. Index to Volunteer Soldiers, 1784-1811, Virgil D. White, National Historical Publishing Co.: Waynesboro, TN, 1987. Also serving with Inman in Doherty's Regiment were Daniel Wilson, Pvt. Adam Wilson (Jr.), Ensign John Wilson and Joseph Wilson, all possible sons of Adam Wilson Sr. and brothers of William Wilson, later of Hickman Co., TN, but then of Jefferson and Greene Cos., East TN.

18. Lizzie's full name was likely Eliza Louisa Caroline. In later life, she is repeatedly shown as Louisa C., and Martha Caroline was a name passed down in several branches of the family. Martha Wilson Inman, her mother, may have been Martha Caroline Wilson.

19. The Ozark Tribune in September 1905 reported that the case of W.D. Wilson and S.E. Wilson v. Eliza Saunders had been continued.

20. Squatting was commonplace in the area: Joseph Porter, a possible relative for whom the township was named, originally squatted at Delaware Town after the Indians there had moved west; Porter claimed to have bought the land from the Indians or government when challenged about his ownership rights. Joseph Porter was the son of Rees Porter, a prominent Giles Countian.

21. Campbell's Gazetteer of Missouri, 1874.

22. 1870 Federal Agricultural Census Schedule, Porter Township, Christian Co., MO.

23. Interview with Jane Sparkman Inman, June 7, 1971 by Etsyl Sparkman, a nephew. Aunt Jane was 87 at the time. John Wesley doesn't cite this earlier service in his feder pension applicatin; he may have been hired as a teamster on the civilian payroll for the military. It appears significant that he and his older brothers, James L. and Joseph Porter, fail to appear on these early rosters; John Wesley later surfaces on the 6th Provsional Militia rolls, but James L. Joseph P. have no Missouri service record, suggesting they served in another states troops, perhaps Arkansas. They were not found on Confederate rolls.

24. The mother's pension records of Sarah Moore Inman show Elkanah had been disabled by consumption since 1856.

25. The Covington Record, Oct. 12, 1922, p. 1.

26. The Covington Record, Oct. 12, 1922, p. 1.

27. Finley Glover Inman, son of John Wesley and Lavanda Wilson Inman and double cousin of Bill. He was known as "Bud" all his life. At this time he was single, but later married Mary Alice Dewitt aka Lawson and fathered, among other, Ida Mae Inman McConnell. Bud didn't make a stake in Oklahoma, although he may have returned briefly with his young family circa 1898. He moved back to Christian Co., where he died in 1914.

28. The Ozark Tribune in September 1905 reported that the case of W. D. Wilson and S. E. Wilson v. Eliza Saunders had been continued.

29. Because of the destruction of most Giles Co. marriage records, it is possible Nancy Ann had a short-lived marriage and perhaps a divorce. At the time, divorced women took back their maiden names as a matter of course. She is not listed in the 1850 Giles census. That marriage would help account for the relatively late age at which she wed Francis P. and the large age gap between the two.

30. Ibid, March 20, 1855, p. 228, Nancy Ann Inman v. Peter Ussery, civil action: "Defendant's attorney moves that plaintiff's present husband be made party to this suit. Ordered and continued."

31. Ibid, November 1856, p. 53: "Since commencement of this suit, plaintiff has intermarried with Francis P. Wilson. It is by agreement of parties ordered that said F.P. Wilson be made a party plaintiff to prosecute this suit jointly with his said wife Nancy Ann.

32. Susannah Clark may have died well before the 1820s, and John remarried. The name Susan/Susannah is curiously absent from the names of known descendants. Martha is much more common, even though some of the families have not been traced. The only firm data comes from the 1820 census, which indicates John's wife was born between 1775 and 1794, just as he was.

33. Pulaski Western Star, Dec. 6, 1849.

34. Trumpet of Liberty, Pulaski, TN, Oct. 11, 1838.

35. Joseph Jr. was the son of Joseph Sr. and Isabella Henry Carroll, a substantial farmer from NC who planted a crop in Maury Co., TN in 1813 before moving to the American bottoms across from St. Louis in 1814 and then to Pike in 1815. Joseph Sr. and Isabella reared 11 children, of whom Joseph was the youngest.

Isabella and Joseph married in SC before heading west. The Carrolls, Jordans, Watsons, Allisons, all SC families, settled in Pike from 1811 to 1816 and were Presbyterian seceders, people of substance, "good livers," who owned sizable farms, houses, cattle and horses, according to The Encyclopedia of the New West.

Joseph Sr. was the son of Joseph I, a Scotch-Irishman, received a royal grant and settled in South Carolina. He fought in the Revolution and at the Battle of King's Mountain. His wife, Miss Brook, a Scotish Irish woman visited the battlefield immediately after the contest was over to succor the wounded and saw the body of Col. Ferguson, who died so gallantly.

Isabella was the daughter of Alexander Henry of SC, who fought in the Revolution at Cowpens, Eutaw, Haning Rock and King's Mountain. She had a brother, Josiah, who settled in Pike Co., MO and married the daughter of Capt. Robert Jordan, who with his 13-year-old son, in 1813, was the last person killed by Indians in northeast Missouri.

36. The Encyclopedia of the New West, probably 1883.

37. Weakley Co., TN, where Isaac was found in the 1850 census, is adjacent to Obion Co. Isaac may have accompanied his brother Andrew there in 1827, when Andrew is shown on the first occupant entry book inWeakley. Andrew is not known to have returned to Giles Co. until 1840, but Isaac had come back to Morgan Co., AL by September 1830 and Giles in 1840.

38. Research on the entire Isaac P. Inman lineage was assisted by Betty Inman Carson, Rt. 2, Box 46, Valley View, TX, 1992, a descendant of Isaac Inman though son Isaac Daniel and grandson Homer Edward Inman.

39. Information based on interviews with still-living grand-daughters, almost age 100, of Joseph C. Inman of Giles Co. and Lauderdale Co., AL, whose descendants moved to Kerens, TX.

40. The early Wilson of the Adam line were often consistent in spelling the name Willson, and they are differentiated from other Wilsons in East TN by that spelling on occasion.

41. Ansearchin' News: the Tennessee Genealogical Magazine, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall 1987, p. 133.

42. Grandison was a name carried down in the Inman-Wilson line. John Wesley Inman and Nancy Lavanda Wilson named a son John Grandison, as did his brother, David. "Grandison" Wilson, a farmer, b. 1826, TN, was living with Elizabeth Armstrong, age 65, NC, and Edith Wilson, age 55, NC, in 1850; Elizabeth owned the $1,800 in land. The relationship between Grandison and Edith is unknown. The Dickeys were Giles Co. pioneers of the Campbellsville and Dry Creek areas.

43. Circuit Court Minute Book D, September 1855, pp. 271-272, Mary Wilson and her husband, plaintiff, v. Peter Ussery.

44. Ibid, March 20, 1855, p. 228, Nancy Ann Inman v. Peter Ussery, civil action: "Defendant's attorney moves that the plaintiff's present husband be made party to this suit. Ordered and continued." Ibid, November 1856, p. 53: "Since commencement of this suit, plaintiff has intermarried with Francis P. Wilson. It is by agreement of parties ordered that said F. P. Wilson be made a party plaintiff to prosecute this suit jointly with his said wife Nancy Ann."

45. Based on age in Arkansas History Commission files, in January 1864, he was reported as age 38. He earlier is noted as 28. He was, more likely, 48. In the 1850 census, he is shown as 33, while he was listed as 39 in 1860.

46. In his resignation letter of Dec. 29, 1863, James H. refers to two years and four months if service without a day of leave, dating his service back to July or August 1861. No military records in the State Archives document this service, which must have taken place in a regular U. S. unit rather that the Home Guard or Enrolled Missouri Militia. Pension records for Eliza Louisa Inman Glover Wilson may yet identify this unit. His appointment as an officer of the 1st Arkansas, before he even mustered in, certainly suggests prior U. S. service.

47. This medical certificate bears the notation: "Copy furnished commission (on) pensions April 21, 1883."